`maxTotalTimeout` is never enforced unless a progress notification arrives

[sainikhiljuluri]

What happens

maxTotalTimeout is documented as a hard cap:

Maximum total time (in milliseconds) to wait for a response. If exceeded, an SdkError with code SdkErrorCode.RequestTimeout will be raised, regardless of progress notifications.

It is not enforced unless a progress notification arrives and resetTimeoutOnProgress is set. Without both, the budget does nothing.

Measured on main, with a transport that never responds:

{ timeout: 1000, maxTotalTimeout: 150 }
  at 200ms  → still pending          (cap already exceeded)
  at 1200ms → "Request timed out"    (fired on `timeout`, not the cap)

{ maxTotalTimeout: 400 }
  after 3000ms → still pending       (waits for the 60s default timeout)

So a caller asking for a 150ms ceiling got 1000ms, and a caller asking for 400ms got 60s.

Why it happens

In packages/core-internal/src/shared/protocol.ts, _setupTimeout arms the pending timer with timeout only:

timeoutId: setTimeout(onTimeout, timeout),

maxTotalTimeout is read in exactly one place — the elapsed check inside _resetTimeout — and _resetTimeout has a single caller, guarded by:

if (timeoutInfo && responseHandler && timeoutInfo.resetTimeoutOnProgress) {

So the only way the budget is ever consulted is the progress path. A request with no progress notifications, or with resetTimeoutOnProgress left at its default of false, never checks it.

Why it survived

The existing test (test/shared/protocol.test.ts, "should respect maxTotalTimeout") passes resetTimeoutOnProgress: true and feeds two progress notifications, so it exercises the one path that works.

Expected

The pending timer should be armed for whichever limit comes first, and re-armed against the remaining budget on each progress notification, so the cap holds whether or not progress arrives.

Environment

main at 3924de99 (2.0.0-alpha.0). The same shape is present on v1.x.

Not related to #2224, #2136, #1870 or #2082 — those concern resetTimeoutOnProgress needing an onprogress callback, and none of them touch _setupTimeout or the arming.

I have a fix and tests ready and am happy to open a PR if useful.

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AI assistance was used to investigate and write this report.