Dots go silent for Pro users: account-level failure survives Dot deletion and recreation

#What happened

On October 17, 2026, two ChatGPT Pro users reported on the OpenAI Developer Community that their Dots stopped replying around 1:00 PM ET. Messages show as Read, the Dot computer shows "Ready", but zero replies come back.

#Why it matters

This is worse than a single-user bug. One reporter fully characterized the failure: a stuck pending decision could not be cleared. Stopping the task did not clear it. Deleting the thread did not clear it. Deleting the entire Dot, including saved memories, did not clear it. A brand-new Dot created on the same account shows the identical failure in its own thread. The second report confirms the same account-level outage across all Dots on the account, including a newly created Dot, since 1:07 PM ET. Ordinary ChatGPT conversations on the same account still work, and OpenAI's status page showed all operational throughout.

#Support status

One user has support cases 17555479 and 17556085 open with only AI replies so far; the other was escalated to a specialist with a response promised "in the coming days" and no case number issued. At least two users describe the same "Read, computer Ready, no replies" signature today, so this looks like a product-side bug, not an account one-off.

Verified October 17, 2026.