"Your account needs reconnecting" — what actually happened
Access tokens die for several different reasons. Knowing which one saves you from retrying something that will never work.
Optional — the post reads fine without one.
Every scheduling tool eventually tells you an account needs reconnecting. It is rarely the tool's fault, and the underlying cause determines whether reconnecting will actually fix it.
The usual causes
- ✓The token simply expired and no refresh token was issued — normal, reconnect and move on
- ✓You changed your password, which invalidates tokens on most networks
- ✓You revoked app access, deliberately or while tidying up connected apps
- ✓The network invalidated tokens itself, which happens during platform migrations
- ✓The account was restricted, in which case reconnecting will fail again immediately
Why tools cannot just retry
A 401 is not a transient error. Retrying it produces another 401, forever, and a tool that keeps retrying silently is worse than one that stops and tells you — because you will assume posts are going out.
The correct behaviour is to mark the connection dead, stop attempting it, and ask for a reconnect. AttentionPilot does this and shows which account, rather than failing posts quietly.
Reducing how often it happens
Where a network issues refresh tokens, a good tool renews before expiry rather than at it — a token that dies mid-publish is a partial failure that did not need to happen. Beyond that, the main lever is not revoking app access while tidying, which is a surprisingly common cause.