diff --git a/bot/bot.ts b/bot/bot.ts
index fdaabc2..6d2e5d5 100644
--- a/bot/bot.ts
+++ b/bot/bot.ts
@@ -1653,7 +1653,21 @@ bot.on("message:text", async (ctx) => {
   }
 
   if (!reply) {
-    if (!ranTool) console.warn("redstone: no reply and no tool ran for", { chatId, text: text.slice(0, 80) });
+    if (!ranTool) {
+      // Both providers returned null AND nothing useful happened during the
+      // turn — surface that to the user instead of silently dropping the
+      // message. Usually means OpenRouter hit its free-tier rate limit and
+      // Gemini is also down/throttled; tell them what to do.
+      console.warn("redstone: no reply and no tool ran for", { chatId, text: text.slice(0, 80) });
+      try {
+        await ctx.reply(
+          "🤖 AI is unreachable right now — both OpenRouter and Gemini just declined. "
+          + "Usually the free-tier daily cap resetting around UTC midnight. Try again in a few minutes, "
+          + "or use <code>/model</code> to pick a different model.",
+          { parse_mode: "HTML", reply_parameters: { message_id: ctx.message.message_id } },
+        );
+      } catch { /* if even the error reply fails, nothing more we can do */ }
+    }
     return;
   }