Lifetime timeout and task completion are different controls

Lizard (lizard.build) now lets you create Lizard Sandboxes with no automatic lifetime expiry. In the dashboard, the deletion choice is “Never.” For Lizard CLI creation, the documented --timeout 0 setting disables expiration. We are the team behind Lizard; this article explains the engineering implication of our October 6, 2026 announcement.

Do not confuse creation defaults with task requirements

The current CLI guide documents a default lifetime of 300000 milliseconds: five minutes. A default can be useful for short disposable work, but it is not evidence that every task should finish within that period. When a workspace must carry context into tomorrow, choose the lifetime policy explicitly.

A timeout is also not a task-completion detector. Disabling it does not mean the agent knows when to stop, the process is healthy, or the result is correct. It simply removes automatic expiry from the resource's lifetime policy.

Design the handoff before extending the lifetime

Consider an illustrative agent task that prepares a repository change and waits for review. Give the work a clear completion condition: produce the proposed diff and stop for a human decision. Record the workspace's purpose and the location of the output. Choose Never if that review may occur the next day.

This separates two controls: the task decides when the agent has done enough, while the lifetime setting decides whether the workspace expires automatically. Neither substitutes for the other.

Verify the pause boundary

The announced pause/resume capability preserves memory and files for supported configurations. The CLI guide says the snapshot workflow does not support attached Persistent Volumes. That limitation belongs in the workflow design, not in a footnote discovered after work has started.

For a compatible configuration, consider pause/resume as a separate lifecycle decision. For an incompatible configuration, plan using the supported capabilities and retain important outputs appropriately. Never is not an uptime guarantee, and it does not imply universal snapshot support.

Calculate runtime independently

The verified Small rate on October 6 is $0.009 per hour, with per-second metering while running. A 30-day continuously running example is 720 hours × $0.009 = $6.48 in compute. Storage and any separate plan charges are not included.

Set an owner and deletion milestone when creating a workspace without expiry. In the illustrative review workflow, that milestone is “the patch has been reviewed and useful output retained.” This makes lifetime, task completion, cost, and cleanup four explicit decisions rather than one overloaded timer.

Source: Lizard’s October 6 announcement.

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