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Deadline Propagation - CI/CD Glossary Definition

Deadline propagation carries the remaining time budget down through nested calls.

Deadline propagation is passing a remaining-time deadline down through nested calls so each downstream step knows how long it may run before the overall operation must give up.

Deadline propagation ensures a caller's deadline is honored end to end. Each hop forwards the absolute deadline so no downstream call outlives the caller's patience.

Why it matters

Without propagation, a downstream call can keep running after the caller has already timed out, wasting runner minutes on work no one will use.

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