Knob

Run timeout

You might say: execution deadline, wall-clock limit, time budget

The maximum time a run or one of its steps may execute before the runner cancels it. The limit covers hangs as well as useful work. A timeout only stops a run. To show the work is done, the run still needs a check that can pass or fail.

What it does
Bounds compute cost and gives the orchestrator a clear failure signal for a stuck task.
Ask
What should happen when this run reaches its deadline?
Typical
Set a positive integer per job and step. GitHub Actions defaults a job to 360 minutes and supports up to 360 minutes for a step. Kubernetes uses activeDeadlineSeconds for a Job.
Trouble
A run burns the whole budget on retries, leaves child processes behind, or times out before it can save its result.

What to look for

  1. A timeout-minutes field beside the job settings
  2. A countdown or elapsed-time badge on the run page
  3. A failed or cancelled result marked DeadlineExceeded or timeout

Connections

Sources

  1. GitHub, Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions, jobs.<job_id>.timeout-minutesThe maximum number of minutes to let a job run before GitHub automatically cancels it. Default: 360
  2. GitHub, Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions, jobs.<job_id>.steps[*].timeout-minutesThe maximum number of minutes to run the step before killing the process. Maximum: 360 for both GitHub-hosted and self-hosted runners.
  3. Kubernetes, Jobs, Active deadlineThe `activeDeadlineSeconds` applies to the duration of the job, no matter how many Pods are created.
  4. Kubernetes, Jobs, Active deadlineOnce a Job reaches `activeDeadlineSeconds`, all of its running Pods are terminated and the Job status will become `type: Failed` with `reason: DeadlineExceeded`.
  5. Lauren Tan, pstack, Let loops start themselvesa duration is not a finish condition. "work on this for 4 hours" gives the agent nothing to check

Use it on your project

teardown-apply: hold "Run timeout" (run-timeout) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/software-factory/ against my project

Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.

An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal