# Assistant messages

> How many chat messages your plan includes each month, and why connecting Claude or ChatGPT never counts against them.

There are two different ways to put an assistant on your tasks, and only one of them has a limit.

- **The chat built into Done Bear.** The panel you open in the app, or the Slack integration. The assistant behind it is called eve, which is the name you will see if you ever run out.
- **Your own assistant, connected to Done Bear.** Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or Codex, reaching your tasks from where you already work.

The built-in chat has a monthly allowance on Free and on the founding grant. Your own connected assistant has no allowance at all, on any plan.

## Connecting your own assistant is never limited

Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and Codex are uncapped. Those conversations are not counted, not rationed, and never draw on the allowance below — including on the Free plan.

The reason is where the thinking happens. When you ask Claude to sort out your week, Claude does the thinking on your own Claude subscription, and Done Bear only answers its requests for your data. That costs Done Bear nothing to run, so there is nothing to meter.

## The built-in chat has a monthly allowance

On the Free plan and on the founding grant, the built-in chat includes **200 messages per calendar month**. Paid plans have no limit.

The allowance resets on the 1st and starts again from zero; unused messages do not carry over. Months are counted in UTC, so if your timezone is well ahead of or behind that, the reset can land the evening before or the morning after your own 1st.

## What counts as a message

Each message you send counts as one, however long the answer runs and however many steps it takes to get there. Messages sent through Slack come out of the same allowance.

Replying to an approval prompt does not count. When eve asks before changing something you already had, saying yes is finishing the question you already asked rather than asking a new one.

If the count cannot be checked for any reason, your message goes through. It is never allowed to block you by accident.

## When you run out

eve tells you the allowance is spent and gives you the date it resets, then stops answering until then. Nothing else changes: your tasks, your apps, your sync, and your connected assistants all carry on exactly as before.

## Related

- [Plans and limits](/help/plans)