E1701. Approval timeout

Severity: ERROR. Class: HITLTimeoutError (subclass of PolicyDeniedError).

What happened

The SDK called request.wait() and the approval was not resolved before the timeout elapsed (default 300s, server cap 1800s).

Why it matters

Approvers may be offline, slow to respond, or the approval was routed to the wrong queue. The SDK fails closed: the call is denied to the agent.

How to fix

Either (a) raise the per-call timeout (timeout_s=...), (b) ask the admin to configure a shorter SLA so the request escalates faster (/settings/hitl), or (c) catch HITLTimeoutError in your agent and gracefully retry or abort.

Catching this error

except PolicyDeniedError catches this. HITLTimeoutError subclasses PolicyDeniedError so existing fail-closed paths keep working.

See also

• Approval Workflow. The parent concept
• SDK: Approval callback. The request_approval + wait API
• Errors index