agent-deadline

Cooperative per-task deadline primitive for AI agent workflows.

Agent loops chain LLM calls and tool calls. Each step has its own network timeout, but rarely is there a single wall-clock cap on the whole task. This crate is a small zero-dependency Deadline type that the loop checks between steps and hands to downstream calls as their remaining timeout.

Cooperative model: code checks the deadline. Nothing is preempted.

Install

[dependencies]
agent-deadline = "0.1"

Use

use std::time::Duration;
use agent_deadline::{Deadline, DeadlineExceeded};

let deadline = Deadline::after(Duration::from_secs(30));

// Between steps, check whether the cap has passed.
deadline.check_or_err().unwrap();

// Plug the remaining time into per-call timeouts.
let remaining = deadline.remaining();

// Tighten for a nested operation: pick the earlier of the two.
let retry = deadline.intersect(&Deadline::after(Duration::from_secs(5)));
assert!(retry.remaining() <= Duration::from_secs(5));

check_or_err() returns Err(DeadlineExceeded) once the clock has passed the deadline. Catch it at the top of the loop to return a partial result instead of hanging on the next call.

License

MIT