diff --git a/.changeset/transient-request-timeout.md b/.changeset/transient-request-timeout.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..4184fd480d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.changeset/transient-request-timeout.md
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+---
+"@runfusion/fusion": patch
+---
+
+summary: Provider request timeouts now retry with backoff instead of looping planning forever.
+category: fix
+dev: Adds `/\brequest timed out\b/i` and `/\bAPIConnectionTimeoutError\b/i` to `TRANSIENT_ERROR_PATTERNS` (`packages/engine/src/errors/transient-error-patterns.ts`). The Anthropic/OpenAI SDK `APIConnectionTimeoutError` default message `"Request timed out."` matched no pattern, so it fell through to `specifyTask`'s generic failure branch which restores `status: null` with no counter and no `nextRecoveryAt` — triage rediscovery then re-admitted the card every poll indefinitely. Now routes into the bounded `MAX_RECOVERY_RETRIES` (3) + 60s/120s/300s backoff policy. Pattern is anchored to "request timed out" rather than a bare timeout match so agent prose and verification output ("BuildKit timed out", "Test suite timed out after 30000ms") stay permanent. Does not affect model fallback, which pi decides internally.
diff --git a/packages/engine/src/__tests__/transient-error-detector.test.ts b/packages/engine/src/__tests__/transient-error-detector.test.ts
index cd63c30c71..3c848448fb 100644
--- a/packages/engine/src/__tests__/transient-error-detector.test.ts
+++ b/packages/engine/src/__tests__/transient-error-detector.test.ts
@@ -179,6 +179,36 @@ describe("Transient Error Detector", () => {
       expect(isTransientError("Aborted")).toBe(false);
       expect(isTransientError("The operation was aborted by user")).toBe(false);
     });
+
+    /*
+    FNXC:Reliability-ErrorClassification 2026-08-10-18:32:
+    `"Request timed out."` is the Anthropic/OpenAI SDK `APIConnectionTimeoutError` default message.
+    It previously matched no pattern, so it fell through to the generic planning-failure branch that
+    writes no counter and no backoff — triage re-admitted the card every poll, forever. Measured:
+    48 such events across 10 tasks in 30 hours with 0-minute gaps between attempts. Classifying it
+    transient routes it into the bounded MAX_RECOVERY_RETRIES=3 + backoff policy.
+    */
+    it("classifies a provider request timeout as transient", () => {
+      expect(isTransientError("Request timed out.")).toBe(true);
+      expect(isTransientError("Specification failed: Request timed out.")).toBe(true);
+      expect(isTransientError("request timed out")).toBe(true);
+      expect(isTransientError("APIConnectionTimeoutError: Request timed out.")).toBe(true);
+    });
+
+    /*
+    The pattern is anchored to "request timed out" rather than a bare /timed? out/ because agent log
+    prose and verification output legitimately contain "timed out". A broad match would reclassify
+    real, permanent task failures as retryable — the mistake the connection-only rule was written to
+    avoid. These strings are all observed in production task logs.
+    */
+    it("does NOT treat non-request timeout prose as transient", () => {
+      expect(isTransientError("BuildKit timed out while building the image")).toBe(false);
+      expect(isTransientError("force-requeue after stuck-kill unwind timeout")).toBe(false);
+      expect(isTransientError("Test suite timed out after 30000ms")).toBe(false);
+      expect(isTransientError("Verification command timed out")).toBe(false);
+      // Pre-existing negative cases that must stay negative: "timeout" is not "timed out".
+      expect(isTransientError("Request timeout")).toBe(false);
+    });
   });
 
   describe("isNonPlanDefectPlanReviewFailure", () => {
diff --git a/packages/engine/src/errors/transient-error-patterns.ts b/packages/engine/src/errors/transient-error-patterns.ts
index abacbfc35d..7c2bfa4c61 100644
--- a/packages/engine/src/errors/transient-error-patterns.ts
+++ b/packages/engine/src/errors/transient-error-patterns.ts
@@ -47,10 +47,41 @@ export const TRANSIENT_ERROR_PATTERNS: RegExp[] = [
   /ETIMEDOUT/i,
   /socket hang up/i,
 
-  // Timeout patterns (only when related to connections, not general timeouts)
+  // Timeout patterns (connection-scoped — see the provider-request-timeout block below for the
+  // narrow exception covering SDK request timeouts)
   /timeout.*connection/i,
   /connection.*timeout/i,
 
+  /*
+  FNXC:Reliability-ErrorClassification 2026-08-10-18:32:
+  Provider REQUEST timeouts are transient. `"Request timed out."` is the literal default message of
+  the Anthropic and OpenAI SDKs' `APIConnectionTimeoutError`, surfaced to Fusion by
+  `checkSessionError` after pi-coding-agent exhausts its own in-session retries.
+
+  Previously the connection-scoped patterns above deliberately excluded "general timeouts", so this
+  string matched NOTHING and fell through to the generic failure branch in `specifyTask`
+  (triage.ts) — which restores `status: null` and writes no counter, no `nextRecoveryAt`, and no
+  park. Triage rediscovery then re-admitted the card on the very next poll, forever.
+
+  Measured impact before this change: 48 `Specification failed: Request timed out.` events across
+  10 tasks in 30 hours, with zero backoff between attempts (FN-8950 alone burned 8 consecutive
+  attempts over ~8 hours and never reached implementation). Failed planning attempts averaged 33
+  minutes each — 91 of them in 2 days, ~50 hours of wall-clock producing nothing, which was 24% of
+  all planning time. Classifying these as transient routes them into the BOUNDED recovery policy
+  (`MAX_RECOVERY_RETRIES` = 3 with 60s/120s/300s jittered backoff via `nextRecoveryAt`) that the
+  connection-level patterns already use, so a provider blip costs three spaced retries instead of an
+  unbounded loop.
+
+  ANCHORING IS LOAD-BEARING: match `request timed out`, never a bare /timed? out/. Agent log prose
+  and verification output legitimately contain "timed out" (observed: "BuildKit timed out",
+  "stuck-kill unwind timeout"), and a broad pattern would reclassify real, permanent task failures
+  as retryable — the exact mistake the original connection-only rule was written to avoid. This
+  does NOT affect model fallback, which pi decides internally and Fusion only observes
+  (`auth/fallback-model-observer.ts`).
+  */
+  /\brequest timed out\b/i,
+  /\bAPIConnectionTimeoutError\b/i,
+
   // AI provider abort errors — temporary request cancellations (e.g., Anthropic streaming aborts)
   // These occur when the provider's infrastructure drops an in-flight request.
   /request was aborted/i,