Good to know · the fix ladder

When it stops working

Sign-ins expire, work machines get in the way, and one day the assistant that was flying just stops. Nine times out of ten it's one of the five things on this page, and every one has a two-minute fix. Work down the ladder in order.

If your assistant still opens and talks, you can hand it this whole page instead of reading it yourself. Paste this:

paste this to your assistant

Read https://assist.stationarystore.ie/examples/fix-my-assistant and walk me
through the fix ladder for what's happening on my machine. One step at a time,
and tell me what you find at each step before moving on.

Before anything else: you never need admin access. Ever. The app behind the email connection was approved for the whole company by Andre (the Microsoft 365 admin) before you ever got the pack — every sign-in on this page is your own normal work login. If your assistant, or any Microsoft screen, says you need "admin approval", "admin consent", or "admin uplift" — that's wrong, don't go asking IT. Screenshot the exact message and send it to Andre; whatever it is, it's his to fix, not yours to get elevated for.

0. Is it Andre's side? (No.)

If you can read this page, the hub is up — and it's checked round the clock, so an actual outage gets caught fast. The sign-in service and the email connection are Microsoft's and were verified working from Andre's side. Whatever is wrong is on your machine, which is good news: everything below is fixable from your chair.

1. "Login expired · Please run /login"

This is the most common one. Your Claude login isn't forever — it expires now and then, and every request fails with that message until you sign in again. It even warns you three days ahead, but the warning is easy to miss.

In the assistant window, type /login and press Enter.
Pick the subscription option (same as during setup).
It will try to open your browser. On a work machine it often can't — if nothing opens, press c to copy the link, open your browser yourself, and paste it into the address bar.
Sign in on the Claude page. If the browser doesn't bounce you back automatically, it shows a code instead — copy it, go back to the assistant window, and paste it in there.

That last step is where most people give up, thinking they're locked out for good. You're not — it just needs the code pasted back by hand.

2. It can't reach your mailbox any more

Symptoms: the assistant opens fine and chats fine, but inbox jobs fail — it says it can't read your email, the connection errors, or it asks you to authenticate. Your Microsoft sign-in has lapsed. This happens on its own after a while, and always happens after IT makes you change your password. The fix is the same sign-in you did at setup, once, again:

paste this to your assistant

My Microsoft sign-in has expired. Use the authenticate_account tool to start a
fresh sign-in: give me the code and the Microsoft link, wait while I sign in in
my browser, then use complete_authentication to finish it. Then read the
subjects of my three newest emails so we know it's working.

You'll get a short code and a Microsoft web page to type it into. Sign in with your normal work account and your normal two-factor, same as setup day.

Make this the last time you look it up: the 2026-08-06 connector card update teaches your assistant this whole dance permanently — one paste, and from then on it recognises a lapsed sign-in and walks you through the fix itself.

3. It works, but it's gotten… worse

If it logs in fine but has started misreading things, ignoring the email connection, or giving odder answers than you remember: check what model it's running. Type /model and look at the answer.

Since summer, the Opus model is only included in the Max plan — on a Pro plan you now get Sonnet, quietly, with no warning. The original pack assumed Opus, which is why things feel off.
The fix is free: the July upgrade rebuilt the inbox doctor to run properly on Sonnet. If you never pulled it, do it now — open Updates, find 2026-07-16 — Inbox doctoring v2, and paste its block to your assistant.
If you'd rather have Opus back, that's a plan change to Max on claude.ai — your call, talk to Andre about whether it's worth it for what you use.

4. The email connection is gone entirely

Rare, but if the assistant says it has no email tools at all (not expired — missing), the connector needs re-adding. Close the assistant, open it fresh, and type /mcp — if microsoft isn't in the list, paste this into a terminal (PowerShell on Windows), then restart the assistant:

claude mcp add microsoft -e MICROSOFT_MCP_CLIENT_ID=b8557162-d1e5-4e51-be6a-6dfc0840b5d1 -e MICROSOFT_MCP_TENANT_ID=56361a8b-d03f-47b4-9101-94d435d6ea94 -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/brgan-wp/microsoft-mcp.git@eede45b9543f9ffea78ae0ae6dc92f7c87d9a919 microsoft-mcp

Those two long IDs are the same shared, non-secret T&I values from your setup card — the actual sign-in is still your own. After the restart, you'll likely need step 2 above to sign back in.

5. Still stuck?

Email task@stationarystore.ie with the exact error — the actual red text, or a photo of the screen on your phone, no need to type it out. That address works even when your assistant is completely dead, and it lands with Andre straight away. Saying what you were trying to do plus what it said instead is enough; he'll take it from there.

One habit that prevents most of this: when the assistant warns you about anything — a login expiring, an update available — deal with it there and then. Thirty seconds now beats a dead assistant on a busy Tuesday.