Limits and errors

AI rate limits, validation rules, the error response shape, and every error code you can hit.

Rate limits

AI translation shares one budget across the whole product — the manual translation endpoint, single-cell recommendations, batch auto-translate, and the AI work triggered by imports and sync jobs:

Limit	Value
Per organization	200 AI calls per hour
Per user	50 AI calls per hour

Both must pass; exceeding either returns 429 TOO_MANY_REQUESTS. The window is rolling — wait and retry.

Public-API translation reads are not rate-limited this way; they're metered as API usage for billing. See Platform → Limits for platform-wide quotas and where to see your current usage.

Write operations that create billable resources (creating namespaces, terms, glossary items, API keys, running AI translation) are refused with 402 ORG_BLOCKED while your organization is blocked over unpaid invoices. Reads keep working. See Platform → Billing → Dunning.

Validation rules

Field	Rule
Namespace name	Letters, digits, hyphens, underscores (`^[a-zA-Z0-9\-_]+$`); unique per organization; case-sensitive.
Custom language code	Starts with a lowercase letter; lowercase letters, digits, hyphens, underscores; 1–32 chars; unique per organization; immutable.
Custom language name	1–128 characters.
Term mark	Non-empty; unique per namespace.
Glossary item value / translation	Non-empty after trimming.
Custom prompt name / text	Non-empty.

Error response shape

Every error is JSON with two fields:

{
  "type": "INVALID_PAYLOAD",
  "msg": "The payload is invalid."
}

type is stable and meant for your code; msg is human-readable detail that may change.

Error codes

HTTP	`type`	Meaning
400	`INVALID_PAYLOAD` / `INVALID_REQUEST`	Malformed body or parameters — `msg` says what.
400	`INVALID_NAME`	A name field fails its validation rule (see above).
400	`NO_TRANSLATION_SOURCE`	AI translation requested for a term that has no non-empty value in any language — fill in the source first.
400	`EMPTY_VALUE`	A required value was empty.
401	`INVALID_TOKEN`	Session token missing, malformed, or expired.
401	`UNAUTHORIZED`	API key missing, revoked, or unrecognised; or the namespace isn't accessible.
402	`ORG_BLOCKED`	Organization blocked for unpaid invoices.
403	`FORBIDDEN` / `INSUFFICIENT_PERMISSIONS`	Authenticated, but you lack permission — including reading someone else's private custom prompt or a resource in another organization.
404	`NOT_FOUND`	The resource doesn't exist — including a glossary that hasn't been created yet.
409	`CONFLICT`	Duplicate: namespace name, term mark, custom language code, second glossary — or deleting a custom language still attached to a namespace.
429	`TOO_MANY_REQUESTS`	AI rate limit exceeded (see above).
500	`INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR`	Unexpected server error — safe to retry with backoff.

Behaviour during platform incidents

Live status: status.norcube.com. Reads are prioritised during degradation; background work (batch translation, sync jobs, imports) is resumable by design and picks up where it left off — see Sync jobs.