Allow ms and Temporal.Duration timeouts for Sandboxes

[jpwilliams]

Summary

Standardises some of the duration handling across inngest, Sandboxes, and exports the functions for use in @inngest/ci later. This means that Sandboxes and CI will handle:

• number of milliseconds
• An ms-compatible string
• A Temporal.Duration

const sandbox = await step.sandbox.create("box", {
  name: "box",
  vcpu: 2,
  memoryMb: 2048,
  runningTimeout: Temporal.Duration.from({ minutes: 5 }),
});

await sandbox.commands.run("build", "npm run build", { timeout: "2m" });
await sandbox.commands.run("log", "npm version", { timeout: 100 });

Checklist

• Added a docs PR that references this PR N/A Later bump
• Added unit/integration tests
• Added changesets if applicable

[changeset-bot]

🦋 Changeset detected

Latest commit: 7556485

The changes in this PR will be included in the next version bump.

This PR includes changesets to release 1 package

Name	Type
inngest	Minor

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[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The implementation is sound and tested; only minor release-note wording needs correction.

1 open finding

• Release note misstates Temporal.Duration support as new · New

What changed in this PR

Adds shared duration conversion for Sandbox timeouts and future CI reuse.

Changes:

• Adds and exports DurationInput and durationToMs.
• Supports compound duration strings with validation.
• Reuses conversion across Sandbox timeout normalization.

File	Description
packages/​inngest/​src/​index.ts	Exports duration utilities.
packages/​inngest/​src/​helpers/​duration.ts	Implements duration conversion.
packages/​inngest/​src/​helpers/​duration.test.ts	Tests parsing and rejection cases.
packages/​inngest/​src/​components/​sandbox/​validation.ts	Centralizes Sandbox duration validation.
packages/​inngest/​src/​components/​InngestSandbox.test.ts	Tests timeout limits across operations.
.changeset/​durations-to-ms.md	Documents the Sandbox enhancement.

🧠 Review effort: Balanced

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[greptile-apps]

Confidence Score: 4/5

[Medium impact] Adds duration parsing for sandbox timeout configuration.

The code appears safe to merge, with a non-blocking correction needed in the release example.

Findings

1.  Release example cannot run ▶

Fix with agent prompt

### Issue 1
.changeset/durations-to-ms.md:8
Users who copy this example cannot create a sandbox. `step.sandbox.create` requires `name` and either `vcpu` plus `memoryMb`, or `snapshotId`. Even after adding those fields, `"1h30m"` exceeds the five-minute limit for `runningTimeout`.

Include the required create settings and use a compound timeout below the limit, such as `"4m30s"`.

```suggestion
await step.sandbox.create("build", {
  name: "build",
  vcpu: 2,
  memoryMb: 2048,
  runningTimeout: "4m30s",
});
```

---

For each issue above, determine whether it is valid and should be fixed. If so, fix it directly.

Summary

Adds a shared durationToMs helper and exports it with DurationInput.

• Duration inputs convert to milliseconds through one shared helper.
• Sandbox timeouts now accept compound duration strings.

_{Reviews (1) · Last reviewed commit: "fix(sandbox): cap durations where each o..." · Reviewed by Greptile}