From 50d97edbe15e3a4fd72ddbe00a3afb85e9bbafc9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Teknium <127238744+teknium1@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:14:55 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] feat(delegation): bump default child_timeout_seconds to 600s
 (#14809)
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The 300s default was too tight for high-reasoning models on non-trivial
delegated tasks — e.g. gpt-5.5 xhigh reviewing 12 files would burn >5min
on reasoning tokens before issuing its first tool call, tripping the
hard wall-clock timeout with 0 api_calls logged.

- tools/delegate_tool.py: DEFAULT_CHILD_TIMEOUT 300 -> 600
- hermes_cli/config.py: surface delegation.child_timeout_seconds in
  DEFAULT_CONFIG so it's discoverable (previously the key was read by
  _get_child_timeout() but absent from the default config schema)

Users can still override via config.yaml delegation.child_timeout_seconds
or DELEGATION_CHILD_TIMEOUT_SECONDS env var (floor 30s, no ceiling).
---
 hermes_cli/config.py   | 4 ++++
 tools/delegate_tool.py | 4 ++--
 2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/hermes_cli/config.py b/hermes_cli/config.py
index cfcc7ff28..c578ded96 100644
--- a/hermes_cli/config.py
+++ b/hermes_cli/config.py
@@ -739,6 +739,10 @@ DEFAULT_CONFIG = {
         "inherit_mcp_toolsets": True,
         "max_iterations": 50,  # per-subagent iteration cap (each subagent gets its own budget,
                                # independent of the parent's max_iterations)
+        "child_timeout_seconds": 600,  # wall-clock timeout for each child agent (floor 30s,
+                                       # no ceiling). High-reasoning models on large tasks
+                                       # (e.g. gpt-5.5 xhigh, opus-4.6) need generous budgets;
+                                       # raise if children time out before producing output.
         "reasoning_effort": "",  # reasoning effort for subagents: "xhigh", "high", "medium",
                                  # "low", "minimal", "none" (empty = inherit parent's level)
         "max_concurrent_children": 3,  # max parallel children per batch; floor of 1 enforced, no ceiling
diff --git a/tools/delegate_tool.py b/tools/delegate_tool.py
index 2c35c7c7e..e779e6f60 100644
--- a/tools/delegate_tool.py
+++ b/tools/delegate_tool.py
@@ -298,7 +298,7 @@ def _get_child_timeout() -> float:
     """Read delegation.child_timeout_seconds from config.
 
     Returns the number of seconds a single child agent is allowed to run
-    before being considered stuck.  Default: 300 s (5 minutes).
+    before being considered stuck.  Default: 600 s (10 minutes).
     """
     cfg = _load_config()
     val = cfg.get("child_timeout_seconds")
@@ -409,7 +409,7 @@ def _preserve_parent_mcp_toolsets(
 
 
 DEFAULT_MAX_ITERATIONS = 50
-DEFAULT_CHILD_TIMEOUT = 300  # seconds before a child agent is considered stuck
+DEFAULT_CHILD_TIMEOUT = 600  # seconds before a child agent is considered stuck
 _HEARTBEAT_INTERVAL = 30  # seconds between parent activity heartbeats during delegation
 _HEARTBEAT_STALE_CYCLES = (
     5  # mark child stale after this many heartbeats with no iteration progress