October 2026
A note when an answer runs out of room
When an answer, a Council voice, a merged answer or a verdict stops because it reached its length limit, it now says so with a short note under it: “This answer reached its length limit and was cut short.” The note shows as the answer finishes, when you reopen the conversation, on a shared link and in an export. Nothing changes in what you are charged.
Shared links and exports now also show each answer once: a single-model or side-by-side answer could appear twice.
Longer answers from Claude Opus 5.5
Ask Claude Opus 5.5 for something long, such as a full report, a complete document or a whole program, and it can now write a much longer answer, where before it stopped at the usual length. An answer of the usual length uses what it did before. A longer one uses more of your allowance for the length it writes past that: the price shown before you send is the most it can use, and you are charged only for what it writes. If you stop a long answer, only the length past the usual answer is charged.
Your next message can read the whole of a long answer, so you can ask for changes to it, and a synthesis has room to merge all of it. In the Code Council, Claude Opus 5.5 is the Security Reviewer and now has room to finish its review, so a Code Council whose review runs past the usual length uses about 40% more of your allowance.
Fixes
An answer that contained a less-than sign followed by a letter, as in “if x<y”, could lose the text after it. It now shows in full, and a stray formatting mark no longer appears at the end of some answers.
A Council on every plan
The Council now comes in two. The Standard Council is on every plan, the free trial included: five voices from fast, efficient models, then a Chairman’s verdict, for under half the Premium Council’s usual price. On a paid plan, a web search is included in that price.
The Premium Council is the Council you already know, on the leading models, and it stays with Pro, Team and Executive, unchanged. Select Council in the composer, then choose which one. The Code Council is unchanged too.
A more compact Council
Council answers now open as a compact list of the five voices, so the Chairman’s verdict is in view straight away. Open any voice to read it in full. The Code Council and shared conversations work the same way.
A more reliable safety check
Long messages no longer fail our safety check, and if the check is briefly unavailable we now say so and let you try again.
September 2026
Long conversations and web searches carry their own cost
Every model on your board reads the whole conversation you have sent it, so a long thread costs more to answer than a short one. Ask Tone has charged for that since last week, but only past a generous allowance, and that allowance was set high enough that it almost never applied. It is now half what it was.
For a typical message nothing changes: the usual turn is a small fraction of the allowance and still costs exactly what it did. Longer conversations, and turns carrying attached files, now cost a step more sooner. In practice that is about one turn in four rather than one in eight. The composer shows the cost of every send before you send it, so nothing here can surprise you after the fact.
Turns that search the web now cost more than they did, and this is the change most likely to be visible. Search adds a page of evidence to the question, and that evidence is sent to every model on your board, so a searched turn always crosses the allowance now, where before it usually did not. If the search comes back with little, the difference is refunded automatically, as it always has been.
Starter includes more monthly usage
Starter’s monthly allowance is now about a ninth larger, at the same price. Everything you already do on Starter goes further by the same measure, whatever mix of Solo, side-by-side and synthesis you send. The larger allowance applies from your next monthly reset.
One side effect is worth naming, because it looks like a reduction and is not. The plan cards describe each plan’s usage as a multiple of Starter’s, so raising Starter lowers those multiples: Pro now reads 2.5×where it read nearly three. Pro, Team and Executive all include exactly the usage they included before, and none of their prices has moved.
Retrying a Council verdict costs a little more
When a Council deliberation reaches all five voices but the Chairman cannot reach a verdict, the voices are kept and charged and you are offered another attempt at the verdict alone. That retry now uses the same share of your monthly usage as a Solo turn on a mid-range model, up from the smallest share there is. That is on top of any premium your chosen Chairman carries, which is unchanged.
A retry is not a small job: the Chairman reads your question and all five voices again, in full, which is at least the work of the verdict it replaces. At the old price it did not cover the cost of running even the standard Chairman on a long question, and one of the alternatives you can choose in Settings cost more than it charged on every question.
Council turns themselves are unchanged, on both Chat and Code, and so is “Retry synthesis” after an ordinary synthesis turn.
Long conversations cost a little more
Every model on your board reads the whole conversation, not just your last message. That means the earlier turns, the running summary, and anything you have attached. That is what makes a follow-up question feel like a conversation rather than a fresh start, and it is real work, paid for once per model. Until now it was free.
From today a turn that carries a lot of context uses a little more of your monthly usage. A typical turn is unchanged. The allowance covers roughly four times the length of an average exchange before anything is added, and about nineteen turns in twenty fall inside it. A very long conversation, a large attached file, or a very long message can each move a turn up by one step, and the composer marks those turns with a ≡ so you can see it before you send.
It scales the way the work does: a Solo turn pays it once, a two-model board twice, a Council three times. If a turn does not complete, it is refunded with the rest.
A turn that asks two models always costs at least two credits’ worth
On the very cheapest boards, a side-by-side turn could round down to the price of a single answer, which meant two full answers for the price of one. It now costs the same share as a Solo turn on a mid-range model, at minimum. This affects only boards made entirely of our cheapest models, which includes every board on the free trial: a side-by-side trial turn now uses the same share as a synthesis one. Every other board is unchanged.
Side-by-side and synthesis turns cost more
A side-by-side turn now uses about half again the share of your monthly usage it used before, and a synthesis turn about a third more. Both modes run every model on your board and then, for synthesis, reconcile their answers into one. Both were priced when a board meant two of the models we carried at the time. The models have moved on; the price had not.
Nothing else changes. Solo, Council and images are unchanged, on both Chat and Code. Because prices are whole credits, the exact step varies by board: a side-by-side turn on two budget models costs exactly what it always has, while a synthesis turn on that same board (the smallest price there was) moves up by the most, to twice its old share.
Two things follow that are worth knowing. On some boards a side-by-side turn and a synthesis turn now cost the same, in which case “Synthesize these” on an answer you already have costs a credit you would not have paid by asking for synthesis up front. And when a synthesis cannot be completed, we refund the difference between the two. On those boards that is nothing, because nothing extra was charged.
As always, the composer shows what a turn will use before you send it, and that is what you are charged.
Annual plans now save one month
Paying yearly has always cost less than paying twelve times monthly, and it still does. The discount is now exactly one month rather than about a month and a half. Starter annual is $220 a year and Pro annual is $495 a year. Monthly prices are unchanged at $20 and $45, Team stays at $550 a seat, and Executive is still offered at the same rate either way.
If you are already on an annual plan, nothing changes for you. Your price is the one you signed up at, for as long as you stay on it.
One-model turns are now priced by model
Until now, asking a single model a question used the same share of your monthly usage whichever model you picked, the cheapest and the most expensive alike. That was never a deliberate choice. Pricing has always varied by model, but a one-model turn is the smallest turn there is, and the gap between the models was too fine to show up in it.
It shows up now. A Solo turn on Claude Sonnet 5, GPT-5.2, Gemini 3.1 Pro, GLM 5.3 or Claude Haiku 4.5 uses twice the share it used before. These are the models that cost us the most to run, and they were previously the same price as the cheapest ones.
Every other model is unchanged. Claude Opus 5 already cost more than the rest, and still does. Grok 4.3, Kimi K2.6, Qwen3.6 Plus, Perplexity Sonar and every budget model remain at the lowest rate we charge. They are the ones to reach for when a question does not need a frontier model.
Boards depend on the mode. Council is unchanged, on both Chat and Code. Side-by-side is mostly unchanged. Synthesis costs one step more on most boards that include one of those five, because a synthesis turn is priced from all of its models together. A board built only from the cheaper models is untouched in every mode.
As always, the composer shows what a turn will use before you send it, and that is what you are charged. Nothing is ever spent without being shown first.
Dictate a message
There is now a microphone in the Chat composer. Press it, say what you want to ask, and press stop. Your words arrive in the message box as text. It is the companion to reading an answer aloud, further down this page: one for getting a question in, the other for taking the answer back out.
What comes back is a draft, never a send. The transcript is added to whatever is already in the box, so you can dictate in bursts, correct anything it misheard, and send only when you are ready. Nothing is spent until you press Send. A recording runs to two minutes, with a timer that counts up as you speak and turns amber for the last thirty seconds, so the stop arrives when you expect it rather than cutting you off. Your browser will ask your permission the first time.
We do not keep the recording. The audio goes to a speech-to-text provider, comes back as text, and is discarded: it is never written to our database or our file storage, and the transcript is not stored either until you choose to send the message, at which point it is encrypted with the rest of your conversation. The Privacy Policy sets out exactly what happens to it. Dictation uses none of your monthly usage, and is available on paid plans.
Choose who chairs your Council
Settings → Models now lets you pick the Chairman, the voice that reconciles your Council into a verdict. The default is a fast, capable model that keeps a Council at its standard cost, and it is what every Council uses unless you say otherwise.
Some Chairmen are premium: they cost more to run, so a Council they preside over uses more of your monthly allowance. Wherever one is offered you will see how much more, as a multiple of your own standard Council, before you choose it, and again on the composer whenever a premium Chairman is presiding. Claude Opus is available as Chairman on the Executive plan.
Listen to an answer
Every answer now carries a speaker beside Copy and Regenerate. Press it and Ask Tone reads the answer aloud (the merged answer on a Synthesis turn, the Chairman’s verdict on a Council one), so you can take in a long reply while you are doing something else.
It uses the voice built into your own device, which means it costs nothing, works offline, and sends the answer to no one. Headings are read as headings, links are read by their text rather than their address, and a code block is announced by its length instead of recited bracket by bracket. You can pick the voice and the speed in Settings → Preferences; because voices belong to the device they are installed on, that choice stays on the device you make it on.
Web search
Turn on the globe in the composer and Ask Tone searches the web before it answers. What it finds goes to every model on your board and to every voice in a Council, so they all work from the same pages rather than from whatever each one happens to remember. It is the difference between asking a model what it knows and asking it about this week.
The pages behind an answer are listed underneath it, as links you can open and check for yourself. They stay with the conversation: when you reopen it, in a markdown export, and on a share link. Searching adds a few seconds before the first words arrive, and a searched message costs a little more than an ordinary one. The composer shows you the share before you send, and if the search comes back with nothing, you are not charged the difference.
Search is off unless you ask for it, one message at a time. If it is how you prefer to work, you can start new chats with it on from Settings → Preferences. Only the message you send goes to the search provider. It never receives your earlier conversation, your files, or anything Ask Tone remembers about you. Web search is available on paid plans.
Image generation
A third workspace sits beside Chat and Code. Give it a prompt and it makes a picture, from one model or from two side by side so you can compare the same idea. Pick an aspect ratio, open any image full-screen, and download it as PNG, JPG or WebP whatever the model returned.
Images draw on the same monthly usage as chat, so there is no separate quota to keep track of. What a picture costs depends on the model you choose, and the composer shows you the share before you send. Generation is slower than chat (usually ten to sixty seconds), and the composer says so rather than leaving you guessing.
Your images are encrypted at rest with the same key as your conversations, and they are only ever served to you or through a share link you created.
Lite mode has been retired
Lite mode, the zero-credit fallback offered when you ran out of usage, has been removed. It answered using whichever models your board was set to, so it was never the lightweight fallback its name suggested. When you reach your usage limit you will now be offered a top-up or a plan change, both of which keep you on the models you chose. Conversations that used Lite are unaffected and still open normally.
Change your plan from inside Ask Tone
You can now upgrade, downgrade, or switch between monthly and annual billing without leaving the app. Settings → Billing has a Change plan button that opens the plan picker; choosing one takes you to a single Stripe confirmation screen and brings you straight back. Upgrades apply right away and are prorated; downgrades and a switch to monthly take effect at your next renewal. Your top-ups and unused usage come with you either way.
Executive is now available annually
The Executive plan can be billed yearly at $1,200 a year, which is twelve months at the monthly price with nothing to remember in between. Starter and Pro keep their annual discount; Executive is offered at the same rate either way, so choose whichever billing rhythm suits you.
Annual plans now refresh your usage every month
If you pay yearly, your monthly usage allowance now arrives each month for the whole year, instead of all at once at renewal. Nothing changes for monthly plans, and no usage is lost. Annual subscribers simply get their allowance on the same monthly rhythm everyone else does.
August 2026
Solo mode
A new way to chat: Solo. Pick one model and talk to it directly, with no routing and no board. It starts on Claude Sonnet, and you can switch to any other model mid-conversation; the conversation carries on with everything it already knows. Solo is the first mode in the picker on both Chat and Code, and costs the same as a single answer. Auto remains the default for new chats; if Solo is how you prefer to work, set it as your default in Settings → Preferences.
Chairman is now Executive
Our flagship plan has a new name: Executive. Nothing else changes. It has the same price, the same monthly usage, and the same board of four with the full Council and Opus presiding. If you are on the plan, you will simply see it called Executive from now on. The Council’s Chairman, the voice that reconciles your Council and delivers the verdict, keeps its name.
July 2026
Introducing Chairman
Chairman is our new flagship plan for the heaviest use. It brings a board of four models, the full Council with Opus presiding, and by far the most monthly usage. It sits above Pro for the calls where you want everything in the room. See it on the pricing page.
Usage, shown as a percentage
Your usage now reads as a clear share of your monthly plan across the app (in the sidebar, the composer, and the usage page) rather than a raw number to keep track of. Top-ups are shown by name and never expire. And there is no commitment: you can change or cancel anytime, and keep access until the end of the period you have paid for.
Pinned conversations
You can now pin a conversation from its menu, in the sidebar or on the History page. Pinned conversations stay in a Pinned section at the top of the sidebar, so a chat you return to often never ages out of the recent list, and they carry a small pin marker in History. Unpin from the same menu.
Code workspace
The Code workspace is wired end-to-end. Paste or upload source files, put a question to your board, and review proposed changes as diffs, then run Python or JavaScript directly in the browser sandbox, with no setup and nothing leaving the page. Code Council brings five code-specialist perspectives plus a Chairman’s verdict to harder reviews.
Developer docs for the API beta
docs.asktone.ai is now a full developer-docs site for the public API private beta: a quickstart, the complete synthesize reference, a streaming guide, the error catalog, rate limits, credits and billing semantics, and a machine-readable OpenAPI description. The API remains invite-only during the beta. Contact us from a Pro or Team account to request access.
Before this changelog
Ask Tone’s core took shape before we started keeping this page: multi-model chat with Auto, Side-by-side, and Synthesis modes, the five-voice Council with a Chairman’s verdict, conversation history with folders and search, read-only share links, ChatGPT import, team workspaces with pooled credits, and per-user encryption of chat content. Entries begin July 2026; everything from here on gets dated.