What a topic is
A topic is your saved description of a conversation territory, including terms and exclusions. Pausing a topic keeps that definition but stops new collection.
What collecting means
Collecting means the topic currently has customer intent, valid coverage, and remaining capacity. A collected post is a candidate, not a recommendation or a promised inbox item.
Collected posts and surfaced conversations are different
Reply.Quest can collect up to a coverage limit and still surface fewer conversations. Posts can be duplicates, irrelevant, restricted, stale, authored by your own connected account, or below your scoring threshold.
Example: a 50-post capacity is a maximum number that may be collected, not a guarantee of 50 recommendations.
Why arrival time varies
Topic activity, remaining capacity, provider availability, retries, and evaluation time all affect arrival. Reply.Quest therefore does not promise an exact collection cadence. Open the topic for its current state and recovery action.