A 30-second budget has 10 seconds left after 20 seconds of work. A wall-clock step backwards incorrectly reports 130 seconds. A monotonic deadline retains 10 seconds.

Your agent's 30-second timeout grew when the clock moved backwards

Use one monotonic deadline for local elapsed-time budgets. Queue waits, retries and backoff must spend the same allowance.

November 4, 2026 · 6 min · 1230 words · Thomas De Vos
Read Your agent's 30-second timeout grew when the clock moved backwards