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What Is a Step Timeout?

A step timeout is a limit on how long one step within a job may run before it is cancelled, separate from the overall job timeout. It pinpoints which part of a job hung rather than failing the whole job vaguely. It is useful for steps known to occasionally stall, such as flaky downloads.

Why it matters

A job-level timeout tells you the job hung but not where; a step timeout localizes the failure to a specific step. That makes debugging faster and lets a workflow fail or retry just the offending step. It is a finer-grained safeguard layered under the job timeout.

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