# Why did my generated playbook disappear?

> A drafted playbook vanished before use: the step that saves nothing until you continue, the one-hour draft window, and the copy that detaches a sequence.

**Nothing about a drafted playbook is kept until you continue past that step of the setup, so generating one and then navigating away loses it by design. The working draft also expires an hour after you last touch it, after which saving, regenerating and uploading all stop working. A third case looks like loss but is not: choosing to keep a separate copy for one sequence detaches that sequence from the shared playbook.**

_Status: Reviewed – written against Reply's product documentation on 2026-09-22, not yet confirmed against the running product._

## Quick fix

1. Look in your playbook library under the team area. Accepted playbooks are saved there, named after your company and marked as automatically generated.
2. If it is not there, generate it again, and this time continue past the playbook step before doing anything else.
3. Keep working. The draft stays live for an hour after whatever you last did to it, so an unbroken session is safe; a long interruption is what loses it.
4. Check the sequence has an offer attached. Without one there is nothing to generate a playbook from.
5. If an uploaded example was rejected, send a text-based file rather than a scan or an image.

Didn't work? [Contact Reply support](https://support.reply.io/); the team can check your account directly.

## Symptom

You were setting up an AI SDR sequence, Reply wrote a playbook for you, and you may have edited it or asked for another pass. Later there is no sign of it (not in the sequence, not in your library) or the sequence is using wording you do not recognize.

## What the playbook step actually does

During setup, Reply drafts a playbook from the offer you filled in. At that point you can:

- accept it as it stands
- send it back with feedback for another pass
- edit the text yourself
- upload a few of your own past emails so the draft copies your style

All four of those happen inside a working draft. The draft is a workspace, not a saved document, and that distinction is behind the first two causes below.

## The five reasons a playbook is not where you expect

| Cause | What you would have done |
| --- | --- |
| Left the step without continuing | Generated or edited, then navigated away |
| The draft expired | Left the step untouched for more than an hour, or came back to it later |
| Kept a separate copy for one sequence | Edited a playbook shared by several sequences |
| No offer on the sequence | Reached the step with the offer not filled in |
| The uploaded file could not be read | Uploaded a scan or a file with no readable text |

### 1. You left the setup without continuing past the playbook step

This is the most common cause and it is intended behaviour, not a failure. Nothing is written until you move on to the next step. Generating, regenerating and editing all happen in the draft; closing the tab, going back, or abandoning the setup discards all of it.

**How to recognize it:** you remember the playbook clearly, you may have spent time editing it, and you never reached the end of the setup.

**What to do:** generate it again and continue past the step first. You can refine a saved playbook afterwards at your leisure: what you cannot do is polish it before saving and expect the polish to survive.

### 2. The draft expired

The working draft lives for **one hour after your last action on it**, and the clock restarts every time you generate, edit, upload or ask for another pass. This is the same for every account. Working steadily will not lose it; walking away for over an hour will. Once it is gone, saving, regenerating and uploading all fail, because the draft all three act on is no longer there.

**How to recognize it:** the step was open for a long time, or you left it and returned later. The controls stop responding as expected rather than reporting anything useful.

**What to do:** start the step again. If you want to upload your own example emails, have the file ready beforehand; hunting for it is the usual reason an untouched hour goes by.

### 3. You kept a separate copy for one sequence

When you edit a playbook that several sequences share, Reply asks whether to update it everywhere or keep a separate copy for the sequence you are in. Choosing the copy **detaches that sequence** from the shared playbook.

Afterwards the shared playbook reads exactly as it did before (your edit is not in it) and the sequence is quietly running its own version. Both halves of that look like something went missing.

**How to recognize it:** the edit you made is not in the shared playbook, and the sequence you edited from behaves as though it were.

**What to do:** decide which you wanted. To bring the sequence back in line, edit it again and choose to update everywhere.

### 4. The sequence has no offer attached

The draft is written from the offer. Without one there is nothing to work from, and the step cannot produce anything.

**How to recognize it:** the step never produced a draft in the first place, as opposed to producing one that later vanished.

**What to do:** attach an offer to the sequence, then return to the playbook step.

### 5. The file you uploaded could not be read

Uploaded examples have to contain text the system can actually read; it extracts the text layer rather than looking at the page. A PDF page whose text layer is essentially empty is treated as a scan and skipped, so scanned documents, photographs of pages and image-only exports are rejected with a message asking for a text-based file.

**How to recognize it:** the upload was refused at the moment you added it, and the draft continued without your examples.

**What to do:** send a text-based version: an exported document, or the email text pasted into a plain file.

## After you accept: where it lives and how it behaves

**Accepted playbooks are saved to your playbook library under the team area,** named after your company and marked as automatically generated. That is where to look before assuming anything was lost.

**Upload one example, and make it your best one.** The interface accepts several files and lists each one
you add, but **only the most recently uploaded file shapes the playbook**: each upload replaces the
previous one rather than adding to it. The list of filenames on screen is not a list of what was used. This
is current behaviour, so pick the single message that best represents how you write rather than uploading a
selection.

**A sequence with more than one playbook attached uses attachments from the first one only.** Examples you added to a second playbook are not read. This is current behaviour, and it is worth knowing before concluding that an upload was ignored or lost.

## FAQ

### Where does the playbook go once I accept it?

Into your playbook library, under the team area. It takes your company name and carries a marker showing it was generated rather than written by hand, so you can tell it apart from playbooks your team wrote.

### Can I edit it later?

Yes, and a saved playbook is much safer to work on than a draft. When the playbook is shared by several sequences, watch for the prompt asking whether to update everywhere or keep a copy; that choice is what the third cause above is about.

### Why was my file rejected?

The file contained no readable text. Scanned documents and images of pages are the usual culprits. A text-based file goes through.

## Still stuck? Contact Reply support

If these steps didn't solve the problem, the Reply support team can look at your
account directly. Open the [Reply Help Center](https://support.reply.io/) and send
the team a message.

To get an answer faster, include:

- the sequence you were setting up, and roughly when
- how far you got – generated, edited, accepted, or continued past the step
- whether the playbook is shared with other sequences
- the type of any file you tried to upload

Don't send passwords, API keys, or access tokens.

## Related

- [Why did I get fewer sequence ideas than expected?](/troubleshooting/fewer-sequence-ideas-than-expected/) – generated sequences come with a playbook attached
- [Why is my messaging rule not being applied?](/troubleshooting/messaging-rule-is-not-being-applied/)
- [Why does the email not look right?](/troubleshooting/email-does-not-look-right/)

## Build with Reply

- REST API: [Playbooks](https://docs.reply.io/api-reference/introduction) – list, create, change and duplicate saved playbooks, and attach one to a sequence. Generating a new one is not on the API
- MCP: [docs.reply.io/mcp](https://docs.reply.io/mcp/overview) – the same saved-playbook actions are available to an assistant