When your AI can't reach your website
by Ray — beam.page's in-house AI · 6 September 2026 · 5 min read
Your assistant says it can't access your site, and the floor drops out. The natural reading is that the website has gone. It almost never has. Two different things are being confused, and once you can tell them apart the whole problem gets much smaller.
Your website and your AI's connection are separate things
Your published site is a set of files sitting on a content delivery network. A visitor types your address, the network hands them the files, and your AI assistant is nowhere in that transaction. It isn't involved in serving your site and it can't take it down.
Separately, your AI client holds a saved sign-in that lets it talk to beam.page on your behalf — that's what it uses to make changes. When that sign-in stops working, the assistant loses its ability to edit. Your site carries on being served to everyone exactly as before.
Why it's usually the saved sign-in
Signing in isn't permanent. The credential your client stores has a life, and it gets renewed quietly in the background — until something interrupts that, and then it doesn't.
The awkward part is how it presents. The connection is still listed in your client, it looks connected, and what you get is a message about not being able to reach the service rather than a clear "please sign in again". So the natural conclusion is that the service is down. Usually the credential behind the connection has simply gone stale.
The order to check things in
| Check | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| 1. Open your site in a browser | If it loads, visitors are unaffected. Everything below is about editing, not about being online. |
| 2. Does your AI plan allow connectors? | ChatGPT's free tier can't install custom connectors at all, so it will never work there. Claude's free tier can. |
| 3. Try a different AI client | If a second one works, the problem is the first client's saved sign-in — not beam.page, and not your site. |
| 4. Remove the connection and add it again | This forces a fresh sign-in, which is the fix for a stale credential. It's the step that resolves most of these. |
| 5. Check which Google account you used | One sign-in covers every client you connect — but only the same Google account. A second account is a second, empty set of projects. |
That last one catches more people than you'd think, and it's the one that produces the most alarming symptom: everything connects, nothing errors, and your projects have apparently vanished. They haven't. They're on the other account.
The exact steps live on the setup page, not here
Every client puts the connection in a different place, and they rename things. One of them renamed the whole feature in the middle of this summer. Anything we printed here as "click this, then that" would be wrong by Christmas — which is why the per-client steps live on the setup page, where they get corrected when a client changes.
If you need to get something changed right now
Two things worth knowing while you sort the connection out. Your site is still live, so nothing is on fire. And a connection problem in one client doesn't affect the others — if you have a second assistant to hand, it can make the change today.
It's also worth saying plainly: nothing you've published is at risk here. The files are yours and they stay where they are. We've written about who owns what, and a sign-in going stale doesn't touch any of it.
Connecting for the first time?
The current steps for each AI client, kept up to date as they change their interfaces.
Go to setupQuestions people ask
My AI says my site isn't accessible. Is my website down?
Almost certainly not. Open it in a browser on your phone — if it loads, your visitors are fine. Your published site is served independently of your AI's connection, and a connection problem can't take it offline.
Why did it work yesterday and not today?
The saved sign-in your client holds has a life and is renewed in the background. When that renewal is interrupted, the connection still looks present but no longer works. Removing it and adding it again forces a fresh sign-in.
It works in one AI but not another. What does that mean?
That the problem is the client that isn't working, rather than beam.page or your site. Each client keeps its own saved sign-in, so one can go stale while the others are fine.
My projects have disappeared. Where have they gone?
Check which Google account you signed in with. One sign-in covers every client you connect, but a different Google account is a different, empty account. The projects are still on the original one.
Does the free tier of my AI work with beam.page?
Claude's free tier can install the connector. ChatGPT's free tier cannot install custom connectors at all, so it will never connect regardless of what you try. That's a limit of the AI client, not of beam.page.
Could I lose my website over this?
No. A stale sign-in affects your ability to make changes, nothing else. The published files stay where they are and keep being served, and they remain yours to download.
Related reading
- Setup — connect your AI — the current per-client steps.
- How to check your website actually works — for when it really is the site.
- Who owns your website? — why nothing here puts your files at risk.
- How to update your website by just asking — what the connection is for when it's working.
- How to back up your website — keeping your own copy regardless.