Why did my AI optimization fail, and did it use my credits?

Most of the time nothing actually failed and no credits were spent: the AI read your resume, found nothing worth changing, and handed the credits straight back. The rest of this article covers how to tell that apart from a real failure, and what happens to your credits in each case.

Most likely cause: there was nothing to change

When a run produces no changes, your credits are refunded and you get a success state headed Resume Looks Great!, with either No quality improvements were identified. or No additional job-specific improvements were found.

That is the intended outcome rather than an error, and it means the content you pointed the AI at already holds up. A third version of the same result reads No quality issues found to fix. Your resume content looks good! All three mean the same thing, and none of them cost you anything.

You are out of AI credits

Free accounts get 10 AI credits a week and Premium gets 250. Credits reset every week, and unused ones do not roll over, so a light week does not build you a bigger balance for the next one.

At zero, Premium sees You're out of AI credits along with the day the credits refresh, and free accounts see the upgrade prompt. Nothing is spent when you are blocked at zero, because there is nothing left to spend.

Improve Resume Quality is Premium only

If you are on the free plan, this one tool answers Improve Resume Quality is a Premium feature. The plan check runs before the credit check, so being stopped here never costs you credits. Every other AI tool works on both plans.

The tool needs something first

Two things have to be in place before AI optimization can run at all.

• Add at least one work experience, project, or volunteering entry before using AI optimization. The AI rewrites your bullets, so there have to be bullets in the resume for it to work on.
• AI optimization requires a job scan context. Keyword Boost, Full Rewrite, and the bullet generator all rewrite against a specific posting, so run the scan first.

You ran too many in a row

Too many requests too quickly. Please wait a minute before trying again. is a rate limit rather than a failure, so nothing was spent. Wait the minute out and run it again.

A real failure

Three messages describe a run that genuinely did not complete:

• Optimization failed. Your credits have been restored. Please try again.
• The AI returned an unusable result, so nothing was changed and your credits have been restored. Please try again.
• Our AI service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

The first two say what they mean: nothing was changed and the credits came back. Run the tool again.

So were my credits used or not?

They come back. Whether the run fails outright or the AI returns nothing to change, your credits are restored automatically and the balance in the panel updates as soon as it happens. That is why the failure messages can promise the credits were restored: the refund has already gone through by the time you read the message.

Still stuck?

Email support@skillsyncer.com with which tool you ran, roughly when, and what the screen said.