Glossary · Reliability & operations
Deadline Propagation
Passing the remaining end-to-end time budget to downstream calls so each dependency knows how long the original request can still usefully wait.
Why it matters
Independent timeouts can exceed the user's deadline and leave abandoned work consuming capacity after the result is no longer useful.
In practice
Set one request deadline at ingress, subtract elapsed time for each downstream call, cancel expired work, and record which boundary exhausted the budget.
Common confusion
A deadline is an absolute or remaining completion boundary. A retry delay controls when another attempt begins and must fit inside that same budget.
Related terms
Sources
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