Test suite or individual test timed out

April 30, 2026 · View on GitHub

Playbook ID: test-timeout Category: test Severity: high Tags: test, timeout, hang, slow

What this failure means

A test (or the entire test suite) did not complete within the configured timeout period. The test runner killed the pending test and marked it as failed.

Common log signals

Test timed out
exceeded timeout
Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within
test timeout of
jest timeout
go test -timeout
test exceeded
async test timed out

Diagnosis

A test (or the entire test suite) did not complete within the configured timeout period. The test runner killed the pending test and marked it as failed.

Fix steps

  1. Identify the test name in the timeout message and run it in isolation with verbose output to see where it stalled.

  2. Check for missing await, unresolved promises, or callbacks that are never called — these prevent async runners from completing the test.

  3. For Go: get a goroutine dump to see which goroutine is blocked:

    GOTRACEBACK=all go test -timeout 60s -run TestName ./...
# or send SIGQUIT to the running test process: kill -QUIT <pid>

  4. For Jest/Node: run with --detectOpenHandles to find resource leaks that prevent clean exit:

    jest --testNamePattern="failing test" --detectOpenHandles

  5. Verify that any external services or mocks the test uses are available and responding. Add a health-check before the test rather than letting it hang.

  6. Increase the timeout as a diagnostic step only — if it then passes, the operation is genuinely slow and needs optimisation or mocking.

  7. Replace real network or DB calls in unit tests with mocks to ensure the test cannot hang on external I/O.

Validation

  • Run the specific test in isolation and confirm it completes within the normal time limit.
  • Re-run the full suite and confirm no timeout errors remain.

Likely files to inspect

  • .github/workflows/*.yml
  • .github/workflows/*.yaml
  • testdata/
  • internal/

Run Faultline

faultline analyze build.log
faultline explain test-timeout
faultline workflow build.log --json --mode agent

Search phrases this page answers

  • Test suite or individual test timed out
  • Test: test suite or individual test timed out
  • Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within
  • faultline explain test-timeout

Generated from playbooks/bundled/log/test/test-timeout.yaml. Do not edit directly — run make docs-generate.