Reference
Limits
The numbers you'll meet in Piste in one place: how far a change can go, how long a card stays open, default schedules, character limits and allowances.
Updated
Caps on what Piste may change, such as a store edit's 50% limit on a price, are fixed. Schedules and a template's numbers are defaults the owner can change. Each table ends with the pages that explain it, and schedules are in the automation's time zone, which starts as your workspace's, unless a row says UTC.
Rows and tables marked Early access need a Google Ads or Meta account. Google Ads and Meta connections are in early access and aren't available to every workspace yet.
Cards
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| A store edit nobody decides | Out of date after 7 days |
| An order hold nobody decides | Out of date after 24 hours |
| An ad change nobody decides Early access | Out of date after 7 days. An undo, or turning a sold-out pause back on, never goes out of date. |
| A Gmail draft card nobody decides | Out of date after 7 days |
| A change follow-up's card | Open until someone keeps it or reverts it |
| Store edits waiting at once | 10 per store, not counting order holds |
| Ad changes waiting at once Early access | 10 per ad account |
| Gmail drafts waiting at once | 10 per workspace |
| Cards in one Slack message | 10 under a run's post; the rest come with the next post. A conversation's come as several messages. |
| Undo | Once per change. An undo has no undo of its own. |
| A reminder on a budget change, ad change or change follow-up card under a run's post | One, ever, after 24 hours open and before 7 days. At most 1 a day per channel, weekdays 9:00 to 17:00. |
| The Activity page | 200 decisions, then Show older. Download CSV gives the 5,000 newest for the filter you've chosen. |
See Store edits, Ad changes, Connected apps, Change follow-ups, Proposals and cards, Quiet hours and digests and Decision log.
Store edits
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| A variant's price, per edit | At most 50% up or down |
| A discount's end date | At most 365 days ahead |
| Clearance markdown | 25% off a product that's in stock with nothing ordered in 60 days. In a conversation you can ask for 10% to 40%; an automation run always uses 25%. |
| Clearance markdowns proposed | Up to 3 a week from the Change follow-ups automation, or up to 3 when you ask |
| Price probe | A 5% rise for 14 days, 1 per store at a time. It holds while net sales a day stay at 97% or more of the 14 days before. |
| Stock check | Best sellers that sold at least 8 in the last 28 days and have 14 days of stock or fewer |
| Pre-order offered | At 7 days of stock or fewer, up to 3 per check. Not offered again for 45 days once declined or undone. |
| A pre-order is put up to switch back | When stock returns, after 25 orders past zero, or after 45 days on |
| Supplier lead time nobody has given | 21 days, named as assumed |
| Order hold proposed | When Shopify rates the order's risk high, or medium with 2 of 3 warning signs |
See Store edits.
Ad changes and standing approvals
Everything in this table needs a Google Ads or Meta account Early access.
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| A campaign's budget, per change | At most 20%, rounded to an amount the platform can hold |
| Negative keywords in one change | At most 50 |
| A phrase or broad negative keyword | Refused if it would block a search that converted in the last 90 days |
| Ad changes Ad spend watch proposes | Up to 3 a run |
| Standing approval offered | Once the last 4 such changes on the account were applied by people, the first and last at least 7 days apart and the newest within 30 days, with none undone |
After Keep asking me | Not offered again for 90 days |
| Keywords per change under a standing approval | At most 30, exact match only |
| What the blocked searches may cost | At most USD 500, EUR 500, GBP 400, CAD 700, AUD 750 or NZD 850 a month (their last 90 days' average), across everything applied under it in any 30 days. An account in another currency isn't offered one. |
See Ad changes and Standing approvals.
Change follow-ups
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| When the verdict comes | 7 days after the change |
| "Too early" | Fewer than 10 orders in either week, or fewer than 30 across both. For a code discount, fewer than 10 orders that used the code in the week after. |
| "Flat" | Within 10% either way of the week before |
| One run | Up to 3 follow-ups, oldest due first, and at most 1 leaked-code fix |
| The first scan of the store | Looks back 28 days for discounts and launches. Price changes show from the second scan. |
Check again in 7 days | Reads it again 7 days later and replies under the same card |
See Change follow-ups.
Default schedules
These are the default schedules as the app shows them. The owner can change an automation's schedule, except a sale room's, which sets its own.
| Automation | Default schedule |
|---|---|
| Morning sales briefing | Every day at 8:00 |
| Weekly trading report | Mondays at 8:00 |
| Stock watch | Every day at 7:00 |
| Returns watch | Mondays at 9:00 |
| Top customers | Monthly on the 1st at 9:00 |
| Slow movers and dead stock | Monthly on the 1st at 10:00 |
| Ad spend watch Early access | Every day at 8:00 |
| Change follow-ups | Every day at 9:00 |
| Margin memo | Mondays at 8:00 |
| Weekly measurement plan, or Monday budget memo Early access | Mondays at 8:00 |
A watch (Keep me posted) | Mondays at 8:00, or every day at 8:00 for a question about days |
| Store morning check (Store operations) | Tuesday to Friday at 8:10 |
| Store operations weekly review | Mondays at 8:20 |
| Catalogue health audit (Store operations) | Monthly on the 1st at 10:15 |
| A sale room: readiness | Mondays at 9:00 before the sale, store time |
| A sale room: pacing | 10:00, 14:00 and 18:00 on each day of the sale |
| A sale room: debrief | 9:00 the morning after the sale, tried on up to 3 mornings |
See Templates, Margin memo, Weekly plan, Schedule and watches, Playbooks and Sale rooms.
Template defaults
A template fills its numbers in from your store. Where a default depends on how busy the store is, Piste uses the plain default when it can't tell.
| Template | Setting | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morning sales briefing | "Flag a move bigger than" | 25%. 30% for a store under 20 orders a day, 20% from 20. | 5% to 100% |
| Weekly trading report | "Flag best sellers with less stock than" | 14 days | 3 to 90 days |
| Stock watch | "Warn when stock covers fewer than" | 21 days | 3 to 120 days |
| Returns watch | "Only judge products with at least" | 10 units. 5 for a store under 10 orders a day. | 1 to 500 units |
| Top customers | "A big order is at least" | 3 times your typical order over the last 90 days, rounded. Blank lets each run work it out. | More than 0 |
| Slow movers and dead stock | "Dead stock has had no sales in" | 60 days. 90 for a store under 10 orders a day. | 14 to 365 days |
See Templates.
Automations
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Automations per template | 1 per workspace |
| Days of the month in the schedule picker | The 1st to the 28th |
| A run found more than 24 hours late | Skipped: "Missed by more than 24 hours." |
| A run that stops responding | Ended after 2 hours |
| A run's Slack post | Cut at 4,000 characters, with a link to the run in Piste |
| The Schedule tab | 7 days back to 7 days ahead |
| A watch posts | Only when a figure moved by more than 10% and by a real amount |
See Templates, Automations and Schedule and watches.
Store triggers
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| How often Piste checks | Every 5 minutes by default, or every 15, 30 or 60 |
| Cooldown after a run | 15 minutes by default, up to 7 days |
| A top customer | The top 1% to 25% by lifetime spend, a whole number. Needs customer access Piste doesn't ask Shopify for, as does a new customer's first order. |
| Stock running out | 0 to 1,000 units |
| Refunds spike | 1.5 to 20 times the last 28 days' daily average |
| Testing a trigger | Orders from the last 24 hours, stock that's low now, or today's returns |
See Store triggers.
Slack
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| The Kickoff | Within about a minute of the workspace's first Slack install, if it's made during onboarding or within 24 hours of finishing it |
| First week | At most 1 message a day, in the 9 o'clock hour on weekdays, then a summary on day 7, or the next weekday when day 7 falls at a weekend |
| Listening: unasked answers | 1 per thread. At most 5 unasked turns per channel in any 24 hours, counting ones that posted nothing. |
| Listening after "not helpful" | At most 2 per channel in any 24 hours, for 7 days |
Remember this | Messages up to 300 characters |
A question to /piste | Up to 1,000 characters |
| Quiet hours | None by default. When set, large-order and refund-spike store triggers, sale room posts, notices about something you started, and Piste's replies still come through. |
| The weekly ledger | Fridays between 4pm and 9pm, in the owner's Slack DM, with up to 12 decisions and 3 open cards |
See Slack, Channels, Shortcuts and /piste and Quiet hours and digests.
iMessage and the web app
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| iMessage code | PISTE- and 8 characters. It lasts 15 minutes and works once. |
| Chats in the sidebar | The 50 most recent |
| Home: Worth a look | Up to 5 findings, at most 3 about stock: a best seller with 14 days of stock or less, returns at least doubled week on week, or sales up 50% or down 40% week on week |
Connections
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Connecting Shopify | Approve within 10 minutes, in the same browser. A link from Piste's page in the Shopify admin lasts 30 minutes. |
| Orders Piste can see | The last 60 days, unless you grant Allow access to older orders |
| One day's sales report | Any day in the last 30 |
| After you uninstall Piste from Shopify | Access ends at once; the store's record is deleted about 48 hours later, when Shopify asks |
| Ad accounts Early access | 1 Google Ads and 1 Meta account per workspace |
| Connected apps | 1 account per app per workspace |
| An MCP server's name | Up to 60 characters |
| ChatGPT plan | 1 per workspace. The sign-in code works for 15 minutes. |
| Claude plan, for jobs | The owner's. The sign-in has to finish within 15 minutes. |
| Data tools allowance | $50 a month by default, from $0 to $10,000, per UTC calendar month |
| Data tools approval | Any call over $0.50, with no price, or that changes something |
See Shopify, Google Ads and Meta, Connected apps, MCP servers, ChatGPT plan, Jobs and the coder and Data tools.
Measurement and agency rooms
Everything in this table needs a Google Ads or Meta account Early access.
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Alerts and a recommendation in a plan | After 7 days of ad spend and Shopify sales |
| A budget recommendation | Needs 28 days of history and 50 Shopify last-click orders per campaign |
| A recommended budget change | 1 per plan: 20% at high confidence, 10% at medium, none at low |
| A declined campaign | Not proposed again for 28 days, unless its return has risen 30% or fallen 23% since |
| A budget change proposed from ChatGPT or Claude | At most 20%, from a plan study settled in the last 8 days |
| Agency room: the agency's turns | 30 a day (UTC), on your budget. Your own people don't count. |
| Agency room: ad changes waiting | 5 per room |
See Measurement, ChatGPT and Claude and Agency rooms.
Targets, the margin memo and sale rooms
These work with Shopify alone, except where a row says otherwise.
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Targets | Net sales per calendar month, or return on ad spend per Monday-to-Sunday week Early access |
| "On pace" and "Out of reach" | On pace within 5% of an even pace. Out of reach more than 10% short at the average of the last 7 closed days. |
| No post that a target is slipping | In a month's first 7 days, or a week's first 3 |
| Margin memo: a store-wide margin | Only when at least 80% of net sales has a cost per item in Shopify. A best seller with no cost is raised at 5% of net sales or more. |
| A sale's length | Up to 14 days |
| How far ahead a sale room opens | Up to 365 days |
| Sales starting on one day | 1 per workspace (per store, with several) |
See Targets, Margin memo and Sale rooms.
Memory, skills and playbooks
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| All of memory | About 4,000 characters |
| One memory entry | About 2,000 characters |
| A skill | A name of up to 64 characters, with at least one letter from A to Z or a number. "When should the agent use it?" up to 1,024 characters, "What should it do?" up to 20,000. |
| House rules | 2,000 characters per playbook |
| Store operations: "Reorder lead time" | 30 days by default, 1 to 365 |
| Store operations: "Stock each reorder should buy" | 60 days by default, 7 to 365 |
| Store operations: "Ship orders within" | 2 working days by default, 1 to 30 |
| Store operations: "Dead stock after" | 90 days by default, 30 to 365 |
See Memory, Skills and Playbooks.
Jobs
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Working time | 60 minutes per attempt. Retry starts a new attempt. |
| Browser hand-offs | Up to 45 minutes in total per attempt. The 60 minutes stop meanwhile. |
| Jobs at once | 1 per workspace. Others wait in a queue. |
| Waiting in the queue | Up to 1 hour 45 minutes, then the job gives up |
| Browser on a Claude plan | None, so no hand-offs |
See Jobs and the coder.
Is there a usage limit?
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Daily and monthly usage | No limit is set by default. A limit, when set, resets at the start of the UTC day or month. |
| Work your ChatGPT plan answers | Doesn't count towards Piste's usage |
See Usage and billing.
Questions
How long does a Piste card stay open?
A store edit, an ad change or a Gmail draft card goes out of date after 7 days, and an order hold after 24 hours. Nothing is changed, and the change has to be proposed afresh. A change follow-up's card stays open until someone keeps it or reverts it.
How much can Piste change a price or an ad budget?
A store edit moves a variant's price by at most 50% either way. An ad change moves a campaign's budget by at most 20% per change, and ad changes are in early access.
How many changes can wait for a decision at once?
Up to 10 store edits per store (order holds don't count), 10 ad changes per ad account, 10 Gmail drafts per workspace, and 5 ad changes in an agency room.
How long can a Piste job run?
60 minutes of working time per attempt. Time the owner spends on a browser hand-off doesn't count, up to 45 minutes in total, and one job runs at a time per workspace.
How much can Piste's memory hold?
About 4,000 characters in all, and one entry up to about 2,000 characters. The Memory page says when something doesn't fit.
When do Piste's automations run by default?
The Morning sales briefing every day at 8:00, Stock watch every day at 7:00, Change follow-ups every day at 9:00, and the weekly reports on Mondays, all in the automation's time zone. The owner can change any of these schedules.