LLM Timeouts

Every sync and async model call is bounded by a default timeout and a couple of retries — tunable with one env var, overridable per call.

Quick Start

Raise the timeout for a slow provider

Set one env var — every call now waits up to 120 seconds before giving up.

export PRAISONAI_LLM_TIMEOUT=120

from praisonaiagents import Agent

agent = Agent(name="Analyst", instructions="Answer carefully")
agent.start("Summarise the attached report.")

Override per call

An explicit per-call timeout always wins over the env default.

from praisonaiagents import Agent

agent = Agent(
    name="Analyst",
    instructions="Answer carefully",
    llm={"model": "gpt-4o", "timeout": 30},
)

How It Works

Each call seeds a default timeout and num_retries only if the caller didn’t already set them — explicit values win (setdefault semantics).

Setting	Default	Source
`timeout`	`60.0` seconds	`PRAISONAI_LLM_TIMEOUT` env var, else `60.0`
`num_retries`	`2`	Fixed bounded retry count

The defaults apply to registry providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, …) and gateway providers (OpenRouter, LiteLLM-Proxy, Custom).

Configuration Options

Env var	Default	Description
`PRAISONAI_LLM_TIMEOUT`	`60`	Seconds before an LLM call times out. Applied to every sync/async call that didn’t set `timeout`

Per-call override	How	Wins over
`timeout`	`Agent(llm={"model": "...", "timeout": 30})`	The env default and the built-in 60s
`num_retries`	Pass `num_retries=` through the same `llm` dict	The built-in `2`

An invalid PRAISONAI_LLM_TIMEOUT (e.g. abc) safely falls back to 60 seconds and logs a warning — a bad value never breaks a run.

Best Practices

Raise the timeout, don't remove it

A large PRAISONAI_LLM_TIMEOUT still bounds a stuck provider. Prefer 120 or 180 for slow local models over an unbounded wait.

Override per call for one slow model

Keep a low global default and raise timeout only for the specific agent that needs it — the per-call value wins.

agent = Agent(name="LocalLLM", llm={"model": "ollama/llama3", "timeout": 180})

Retries are bounded on purpose

The default num_retries=2 recovers from transient blips without amplifying a real outage into a retry storm. Raise it only when a provider is known-flaky.

Models

Configure providers and model names

Tool Timeout

Bound tool execution the same way

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Getting Started (No Code)

Quick Start

How It Works

Configuration Options

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Models

Tool Timeout

​Quick Start

​How It Works

​Configuration Options

​Best Practices

​Related

Models

Tool Timeout

Quick Start

How It Works

Configuration Options

Best Practices

Related