antigravity-skills-reference/web-app/public/skills/dbos-golang/references/workflow-timeout.md

title, impact, impactDescription, tags

title	impact	impactDescription	tags
Set Workflow Timeouts	CRITICAL	Prevents workflows from running indefinitely	workflow, timeout, cancellation, duration

Set Workflow Timeouts

Set a timeout for a workflow by using Go's context.WithTimeout or dbos.WithTimeout on the DBOS context. When the timeout expires, the workflow and all its children are cancelled.

Incorrect (no timeout for potentially long workflow):

// No timeout - could run indefinitely
handle, err := dbos.RunWorkflow(ctx, processTask, "data")

Correct (with timeout):

// Create a context with a 5-minute timeout
timedCtx, cancel := dbos.WithTimeout(ctx, 5*time.Minute)
defer cancel()

handle, err := dbos.RunWorkflow(timedCtx, processTask, "data")
if err != nil {
	log.Fatal(err)
}

Key timeout behaviors:

• Timeouts are start-to-completion: the timeout begins when the workflow starts execution, not when it's enqueued
• Timeouts are durable: they persist across restarts, so workflows can have very long timeouts (hours, days, weeks)
• Cancellation happens at the beginning of the next step - the current step completes first
• Cancelling a workflow also cancels all child workflows

Reference: Workflow Timeouts