Azure AI Assistant Service freezes during file operations and upload tasks

Other Questions AI Agent
1

I’m working with Azure AI Assistant Service and running into a blocking issue. When I try to handle file operations or uploads through the assistant, my application gets stuck completely.

The Problem:
My code works fine for simple text responses, but fails when files are involved. Here’s what happens:

execution = client.assistants.create_and_execute_run(
    thread_id=chat_thread.id, 
    assistant_id=my_assistant.id
)

print(f"Execution status: {execution.status}")
print(f"Details: {execution}")

The execution gets stuck at ExecutionStatus.IN_PROGRESS for exactly 10 minutes, then times out with status = expired. This matches the documented timeout behavior.

What Works vs What Doesn’t:

  • :white_check_mark: “Tell me a funny story” → Works perfectly
  • :x: “Tell me a funny story and save it to story.txt” → Hangs indefinitely
  • :x: Any file upload operations → Same hanging behavior

Environment Details:

  • Python 3.12.8 with azure-ai-projects 1.0.0b4
  • Tested with gpt-4o-mini (2024-07-18) and gpt-4o (2024-05-13)
  • Different regions (East US, West US) - same issue

I can see the status checking happening in the Azure SDK code, but it never progresses beyond the initial state. Has anyone encountered this file handling issue with Azure AI Assistant Service? Any workarounds or configuration I might be missing?

2

Had this exact issue a few weeks ago with Azure AI Assistant Service file operations. Wasn’t the code - it was my assistant config. Make sure your assistant has file_search and code_interpreter tools explicitly enabled when you create it. Also check your resource quota for file operations - insufficient quota causes silent timeouts. What fixed it for me was adding proper polling with exponential backoff instead of using the default execution waiting. The 10-minute timeout is normal, but hanging usually means your assistant isn’t configured for file operations or you’re hitting resource limits.

3

Been dealing with Azure AI Assistant Service file operations for a year now and yeah, this freezing thing happens all the time. It’s usually thread state management screwing things up.

What happens is your assistant spawns background processes for file stuff, but the main execution status doesn’t show what’s actually going on. I’ve seen this when threads have leftover file references or when file operations start piling up.

Clear your thread state before doing file operations:

# Clear any pending file operations
messages = client.assistants.get_messages(thread_id=chat_thread.id)
for msg in messages:
    if msg.attachments:
        # Handle cleanup
        pass

Also, be specific with your prompts. Don’t say “save it to story.txt” - try “create a text file containing this story and return the file ID”. Works way better.

Another trick: check the assistant’s run status separately before starting new file operations. Sometimes it’s still chewing on previous file tasks even when it looks idle.

This walkthrough covers the advanced config stuff that might help:

Bottom line - file operations in Azure AI Assistant Service are asynchronous on multiple levels, not just the main thread.

4

This timeout with file operations is annoying but totally fixable. Had the same issue with Azure AI Assistant Service last month. For me, it was the assistant’s vector store config causing problems. When you’re doing file operations, the assistant needs proper vector store permissions and enough storage space. Check if there’s a vector store attached and make sure you haven’t hit storage limits. What really helped was ditching create_and_execute_run and doing separate create/execute calls instead - you can actually see where it’s getting stuck. Also check the thread message history right before the file operation to make sure you’re not passing along corrupted state.