Hi everyone,

I’m trying to determine whether this is expected behavior or a bug in the Responses API.

I ran several tests using the following settings:

• Model: gpt-5.5
• Endpoint: POST /v1/responses
• store: true
• Same OpenAI project and API key
• Retrieval using GET /v1/responses/{response_id}

I tested both with and without a conversation ID.

Test results

background	store	conversation	GET /v1/responses/{id} after ~20 minutes
false	true	No	200 OK
true	true	No	404 Not Found
false	true	Yes	200 OK
true	true	Yes	404 Not Found

For the synchronous request:

{
  "model": "gpt-5.5",
  "input": "Test received.",
  "background": false,
  "store": true
}

More than 20 minutes later:

GET /v1/responses/{response_id}

still returns 200 OK.

For the background request:

{
  "model": "gpt-5.5",
  "input": "Test received.",
  "background": true,
  "store": true
}

After roughly the same amount of time:

GET /v1/responses/{response_id}

returns 404 Not Found.

Adding a conversation ID didn’t change the behavior—the synchronous response remained retrievable, while the background response returned 404 Not Found.

Questions

1. Is this expected behavior?
2. Is a response created with background: true intended to be a temporary resource that expires after the background polling window, even when store: true is set?
3. If so, should the documentation clarify that store: true does not guarantee long-term retrieval via GET /v1/responses/{id} for background responses?

I couldn’t find any documentation or an existing forum post that explicitly addresses this behavior, so I wanted to check whether this is the intended design or something that should be investigated.

Thanks in advance for any clarification!

I could not immediately reproduce this issue, and your code looks fine. My best guess at this point is that it was an intermittent glitch. I will keep an eye out for similar reports.

Duly noted, thanks for your response.

There is a bug right now with background_mode, I’m not sure how this is possible with “Astra” and “AGI around the corner.” But it started ever since the “inference optimization” and “Fast mode” came out.

Can you please file a support ticket to expedite?

Hi @OpenAI_Support, this seems to be a repeat of a previous bug [“Background mode requests stuck in ‘queued’ forever - Responses API”] which seems to crop up from time to time (just browse the “background-mode” tag). For the last few days, my API calls using the Responses API and background mode have been failing intermittently with no rhyme or reason. I haven’t changed anything in my API setup. This is with GPT 5.6 sol and luna. The OpenAI dashboard shows “No output items.” The status of the c…

I replied in the original topic.

Can I request that you poll again for those responses that were created with background: true if they still return a response after the couple of hours that has passed?

They will eventually leave “in_progress” and become “completed”

This can take 30-60 minutes for a response that would normally take ~2.5 minutes.

Yes. Both requests are still stored after approximately 1 hour 47 minutes.