agent timed out waiting for fivetran sync to finish, sync stuck

TL;DR

A sync that never finishes is stalled in one phase: extracting against a throttled source, loading against a busy warehouse, or retrying a failing step. The agent should read the sync history to find the phase, wait a bounded time for normal variance, then escalate with the phase named. An agent cannot fix a throttled source by waiting harder.

agent timed out waiting for fivetran sync to finish, sync stuck

Use this when

• An agent waits on a Fivetran sync that stalls.
• The sync shows progress then stops advancing.
• The agent's timeout fires while the sync is incomplete.

Not for this skill when

• The sync failed with an error. Read the error.
• The sync is slow but progressing. That is a duration question.

Steps

1. Read the sync history and identify the current phase and how long it has been there. Note the stuck phase. Verify: the stall point is named
2. Compare against the connector's normal sync duration. Note whether this is variance or a real stall. Verify: normal versus stuck is decided
3. Wait a bounded time for slow-but-moving syncs, checking phase progress between waits. Note the deadline. Verify: waiting is bounded
4. For a truly stuck phase, check the source status and warehouse load for the underlying block. Note the blocker. Verify: the block is identified
5. Escalate with the connector, phase, and stall duration. Note the escalation. Verify: a human gets an actionable report

Variant phrasings

fivetran sync stuck agent wait

The agent-shaped search.

fivetran sync phase stalled

The phase-shaped phrasing.

Compatibility: Fivetran dashboard and API for sync history. Phase names are consistent across connectors.

Why it happens

Fivetran syncs are multi-phase and each phase depends on a different external system, so a stall is always a story about one of those systems: the source throttling extraction, the warehouse queuing the load, a schema change pausing everything. The sync history shows the phases, which means the agent can name the stuck phase instead of reporting a vague stuck sync. Bounded waiting respects that some stalls resolve themselves (a source recovers) while others never do (a hard throttle).

Edge cases / pitfalls

• Cancelling and retriggering a stuck sync can restart a long extraction from scratch. Prefer waiting out transient stalls.
• An agent that escalates every slow sync trains humans to ignore it. Escalate on stuck phases, tolerate slow ones.
• Syncs paused by schema changes look stuck but are waiting deliberately. Check for pending schema approvals.
• Multiple agents waiting on the same sync should coordinate, not each escalate separately.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_aRjrXvrZndPYeJQuugXESA