Server Error 500 – "Prompt is too long" (200348 tokens > 200000 maximum)

[Vaibhavbambhaniya17]

Validations

• I believe this is a way to improve. I'll try to join the Continue Discord for questions
• I'm not able to find an open issue that requests the same enhancement

Problem

When I send a very large prompt to the Continue server, it returns a 500 Internal Server Error. The error message says the prompt is too long (200348 tokens > 200000), but a 500 status code usually means a server problem. In this case, it's actually caused by the prompt being too big.

Solution

Return a proper 4xx status code (e.g. 413 Payload Too Large or 400 Bad Request) instead of a 500, since this is a client-side error due to exceeding token limits.

Include a clearer error message in the response that explains:

The input exceeded the maximum token limit.

The exact token count versus the limit.

How the user can reduce the prompt length.

Optionally, implement client-side validation (if applicable) or server-side pre-checks to catch token limit issues before attempting processing.

[0x23d11]

@Vaibhavbambhaniya17 can you give more specific details like OS, model, api provider, the exact prompt. This would really help to fix the problem