diff --git a/app/api/chat/route.ts b/app/api/chat/route.ts
index 3a1ec617..954da1b9 100644
--- a/app/api/chat/route.ts
+++ b/app/api/chat/route.ts
@@ -49,8 +49,13 @@ type AgentPhase =
 
 const TOOL_BUDGETS: Record<TurnIntent, number> = {
   conversational: 1, // Must be at least 1 so the LLM gets called for a text reply
-  status_check: 5,
-  diagnose: 8,
+  // Investigative questions ("is the auth connected?", "what's the test user?")
+  // routinely need to read several files THEN synthesize an answer. Budgets of
+  // 5/8 were cutting these off at the cap before the model could answer
+  // (telemetry showed 100% round_cap on these turns). Raised so a read-only
+  // investigation can actually finish.
+  status_check: 12,
+  diagnose: 15,
   small_fix: 18,
   feature_build: 40,
   deploy: 25,
@@ -87,14 +92,36 @@ function classifyTurnIntent(message: string): TurnIntent {
   )
     return "diagnose";
 
-  // Status check
+  // Status check / investigative questions (read-only).
+  // These need a real tool budget because answering a question about the
+  // codebase ("is the auth wired up?", "is there a users table?") legitimately
+  // requires reading files before responding.
   if (
-    /(status|logs|running|active|what is|show me|check|where|how|what)/.test(m)
+    /(status|logs|running|active|what is|show me|check|where|how|what|which|whose)/.test(
+      m,
+    ) ||
+    // Yes/no investigative question starters: "is/are/does/do/can/has/have/did ..."
+    /^(is|are|does|do|can|could|has|have|had|did|should|would|will)\b/.test(
+      m,
+    ) ||
+    // Investigative vocabulary anywhere in the message
+    /\b(connected|hooked up|wired( up)?|set ?up|configured|working|exists?|stored|present|enabled)\b/.test(
+      m,
+    ) ||
+    // Any message phrased as a question
+    m.endsWith("?")
   )
     return "status_check";
 
-  // Conversational fallback
-  if (m.length < 5 || /^(hi|hello|thanks|ok|yes|no)/.test(m))
+  // Conversational fallback — ONLY when the entire message is a greeting or a
+  // bare acknowledgement. Previously `/^(ok|...)/` matched "ok" as a prefix of
+  // "okay <real request>", misclassifying real work as chat (budget 1) and
+  // causing round_cap cut-offs. Require the whole message to be the ack.
+  if (
+    /^(hi|hey|hello|yo|thanks|thank you|ok|okay|kk|k|yes|yep|yeah|yup|no|nope|nah|sure|cool|nice|great|awesome|perfect)[\s!.?]*$/.test(
+      m,
+    )
+  )
     return "conversational";
 
   // Default to a generous feature build if we can't tell