Troubleshooting & Performance

Fixes for common issues, what to do if the app feels slow, and mobile vs desktop notes.

Quick fixes for the things that trip people up, including what to do when the app feels slow. If your issue is about how a specific feature works, the feature's own page usually has a "Common problems" section at the bottom.

If the app feels slow or laggy

Most slowness is the browser or device working hard, not your internet connection. A few things help:

  • Reload the page. A fresh load clears up most one-off jank.
  • Update your browser. This matters most on iPhone: make sure iOS and Safari are current. Older Safari versions handle the app's animations and effects poorly.
  • Close other heavy tabs. The card-cutting editor is a real rich-text editor and wants memory; a dozen open tabs starve it.
  • Use a laptop for the heavy modes. Batch card cutting and Block Builder use multi-panel layouts that are roomier and smoother on a bigger screen. Single Card Snipe, Evidence Finder, Logos, and the Library are all fine on a phone.
  • Give the first request a moment after idle. If you have not used the app in a while, the very first action (a cut, a search) can take longer while the backend wakes up. It speeds up right after.

What is not lag, and is normal:

  • A card cut taking 15 to 45 seconds. That is the AI reading your source, not the app hanging.
  • A broad Logos search taking a few seconds. Scanning a million cards for a single common word is genuinely slow; a more specific query is fast.

Card cutting

  • "No matching evidence." The source text does not support your claim. Use a different source or adjust the claim. (This still uses one card cut.)
  • Fetch did not work, or it is a PDF. Some sites block the automatic reader, and PDFs are never fetched. Copy the article text and paste it into the Source Text box yourself.
  • "Source text exceeds 40,000 characters." You are on the free plan, which caps source length at 40,000 characters per card. Trim to the relevant section, or upgrade to Pro for 100,000.
  • "Too many card generations." You hit the rate limit of 10 cuts per minute. Wait a minute and continue.
  • You ran out of cuts. The free plan allows 5 cuts in any 24-hour window. See Plans & Limits for exactly when they free up.

Evidence Finder

  • No results. Rephrase the claim with more specific terms, or broaden it. Very narrow or oddly worded claims sometimes return nothing.
  • "Search took too long." A search has about 25 seconds to finish. A more specific claim searches faster and is more likely to land.
  • The source is paywalled or blocked. Paste the article text into the fallback box that appears, or use the Archive.is link to read it, then cut the card from that.
  • You ran out of searches. Free accounts get 5 Evidence Finder searches per month. Note that a batch search costs one search per claim, not one total.

Logos

  • No results. Broaden the query or check spelling. If the argument is new or niche, it may not be in the library; use Evidence Finder.
  • A broad query is slow. Expected for single common words. Add a word or two to speed it up.
  • The Source links do not open. Sign into OpenCaselist in your browser first; those are authenticated OpenCaselist links.

Speechify and Rhetorify

  • The extraction panel is empty after pasting. Both tools read the formatting of cards copied from Google Docs. If you paste plain text, there is nothing to extract. Copy your cards directly from your Google Doc (with the highlighting intact) and paste again.
  • "Speech generation failed." Click Retry. If it keeps failing, simplify or shorten what you pasted and try again.

Signing in and account

  • "Session expired" or a 401 error. Sign out and sign back in. This refreshes your login.
  • You cannot find email or password sign-in. There is none by design. DebateCardAI uses Google sign-in only.

Mobile vs desktop

  • Works well on a phone: Single Card Snipe, Evidence Finder, Logos, the Evidence Library, Rhetorify, Speechify, and Bracket Math (built to use between rounds at a tournament).
  • Better on a laptop: Batch card cutting and Block Builder, because of their multi-panel layouts.

Still stuck?

If something is clearly broken rather than just confusing, the fastest way to get help is the DebateCardAI community. Reach out and describe what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead.