Deadline Propagation
Claude
"deadline propagation" means passing timeout constraints down through the call chain so that:
Parent operations set deadlines for their sub-operations Each tool/service respects the remaining time budget Operations fail fast when they can't complete within the allocated time
Without deadline propagation:
Agent calls Tool A with no timeout Tool A gets stuck/runs slowly Entire agent pipeline blocks indefinitely Cascade failure as other components wait
With deadline propagation:
Agent sets 30s deadline for the overall task Tool A gets 10s budget, fails fast if it can't complete Agent can retry with Tool B or adjust strategy System remains responsive
This is similar to how gRPC deadlines work, or circuit breakers in microservices, but applied specifically to AI agent toolchains where you have multiple LLM calls, tool executions, and potentially long-running operations that need coordinated timeouts. Makes sense in the AI agent context where you're orchestrating multiple potentially-slow operations and need to prevent any single component from hanging the entire workflow.
Backlinks