Common issues

Start here when something is wrong. If your problem is not listed, run the checkup:

bash

growther doctor

It checks your whole setup and usually names the cause. See Running doctor.

Installing and starting #

"growther: command not found" #

Your terminal cannot find C5 yet.

Close the terminal window and open a new one, then try again. Shells only pick up PATH changes in new sessions.

If that does not work, reinstall — see Installation.

C5 will not start #

Check whether it is already running:

bash

growther status

If it says running but you cannot reach it, stop and start it:

bash

growther stop
growther

"BOOT ABORTED: CRITICAL LICENSE FAILURE" #

C5 stops rather than run unlicensed, so it exits instead of staying up in a half-working state. Read the line under the heading — it says which case you are in.

"bound to a different deployment key" — your licence is fine; the key on this computer is not the one it expects. This happens after restoring from a backup, cloning a machine, or moving to a new disk. Give this computer a new key, keeping the same licence:

bash

growther rekey

If that reports the key is gone or is not the bound one, use recovery, which confirms in your browser:

bash

growther rekey --recover

"GROWTHER_C5_LICENSE_SEED is missing" — no licence file. If this computer was never paired, run growther activate. If it was paired and the file has gone, growther rekey --recover restores it without creating a second deployment.

Do not run growther activate to fix a key problem on a computer that is already paired. Activate creates a new deployment and leaves the old one stranded; rekey keeps the one you have, along with its history.

Not sure which you are looking at? growther doctor reports the licence and key state in plain terms.

"Port already in use" #

Something else on your computer is using port 4299. Use a different one:

bash

PORT=5000 growther

The page will not load in my browser #

Confirm C5 is running with growther status, then go to http://localhost:4299 directly. If you changed the port, use that number instead.

If growther status says C5 is running but the browser still cannot reach it, try http://127.0.0.1:4299 and http://[::1]:4299. localhost is two addresses, and C5 listens on both — but if one of them was unavailable when C5 started, the boot log says so:

text

[bootstrap] no ::1 listener (EAFNOSUPPORT) — C5 is reachable on 127.0.0.1 only.

Use the address that line names. See Why C5 listens on two addresses.

Restart is greyed out or C5 is offline #

When C5 is not running, Restart is disabled because there is no running server to reboot.

To start C5 again:

Click the green Start C5 button in the sidebar menu, on the Settings → System page, or on the offline recovery screen.
Double-click the Growther.ai C5 shortcut on your desktop or Applications folder.
Run growther start (or growther) in your terminal.

Once C5 starts, your browser tab reconnects on its own within a few seconds and the controls become active again.

Self-help: Missing "Start C5" button on offline screens? The green Start C5 button on the offline screen and sidebar menu is governed by an administrative RBAC toggle. If your organization has disabled Sidebar: Restart, Quit, Start C5 in Settings → Access, this button remains hidden for standard users. Ask your administrator to enable the permission for your account.

Models #

"No model configured" #

You have not connected a provider yet. Go to Settings → Integrations and add one. See Model providers.

"Invalid API key" #

Nearly always a copy-paste problem. Copy the key again, watching for a trailing space. If it still fails, make a new key with the provider.

"Rate limit reached" #

You are asking your provider for more than your plan allows. C5 slows down and retries by itself, so this usually resolves.

If it keeps happening, raise your limit with the provider or route some work to a different model.

Results got worse #

Check what changed. Analytics shows quality over time — find the day it dropped and think about what you changed then. A model switch is the most common cause.

Tasks #

A task is stuck as "Blocked" #

Open it. Blocked almost always means it is waiting for you to approve something, or it hit a limit.

A task keeps failing #

Open it and read the error. The usual causes:

A file it needed moved or was renamed
An expired key
A budget limit reached
A website or service it needed is down

Fix the cause, then click Retry.

Everything is queued and nothing starts #

Open Monitor → Queueing.

If nothing is moving, check that you have a working model provider, that you have not hit a budget limit, and that no task is waiting on your approval.

A schedule did not run #

Schedules need C5 running. If your computer was asleep or off, the run was missed — C5 catches up when it wakes.

If C5 was running and it still did not fire, open the schedule's history for the error.

Performance #

Everything is slow #

Check Monitor → Health. If your fleet is large, your computer may be overloaded — try running fewer agents. See Your agent fleet.

Running out of disk space #

Open Monitor → Database only if you suspect the databases. They are usually not what filled the disk. The bulk is almost always downloaded models and caches, which live outside the databases entirely and are safe to delete — C5 downloads them again if it needs them:

Folder	Typically
`qmd/`	The memory-search runtime plus its model weights — often 2 GB or more
`speech/`	The offline speech model, about 60 MB
`cache/`	Working files
`lib/`	Unpacked runtime libraries

growther cache show reports what each is using, and growther cache relocate --to <path> moves them all to another disk without touching your work. If the databases really are the problem, shortening how long history is kept is the biggest lever — see Backups and recovery.

Costs #

I spent more than expected #

Open Ops and look at spending by task and by model.

The usual culprits are a frequent schedule, a large fleet, or an expensive model doing simple work. Set a budget so it cannot happen again.

Serious problems #

"Integrity check failed" #

Danger The program on disk is not the one Growther.ai signed. Stop using it, reinstall from the official installer, and if it fails again ask for help before running it. See Verifying releases.

An update broke something #

Go back to the previous version:

bash

growther rollback

Then tell us what happened — see Getting help.

I think I lost data #

Do not keep working in that install — that can overwrite what is recoverable.

C5 keeps automatic backups. See Backups and recovery for how to restore, and test the restore into a separate folder first.