Agent workflows need deadline propagation, not just timeouts
blaizedsouza · x · 2026-07-26
A production reliability note argues that multi-agent systems need deadline propagation, not just per-call timeouts.
- Set one global deadline at the request entry point.
- Propagate remaining time through sub-agents and tool calls.
- Fail early when the budget is too small.
- Use separate timeouts for reasoning and tool execution.
- Add jitter on retries, and log the exact timeout reason.
- The key metric is p99 latency across the whole agent workflow, because that is where surprises hide.
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