Retry forever

The problem

Sometimes there's no sensible retry count — you just need the operation to keep trying until it works: reconnecting to a broker, waiting for a dependency to come up at boot.

The solution

forever: true ignores times and retries until the operation succeeds or the signal aborts. Pair it with maxDelayTime so the backoff levels off, and ideally an AbortSignal or maxElapsedTime as a way out.

const controller = new AbortController();

const data = await retry(connectToBroker, {
  forever: true,
  initialDelayTime: 500,
  maxDelayTime: 10_000, // cap the backoff so it doesn't blow up
  signal: controller.signal, // the only way out besides success
});

Try it

Set failUntil higher than any retry count — without forever it would give up, but with forever on it keeps going until the request finally succeeds.

attempt timelineidle

• failed
• timed out
• bailed
• pending
• succeeded

forever keeps retrying past any fixed count — success or an abort is what stops it.

foreverignore times; until success/abortfailUntilattempts that fail before successinitialDelayTimems before the first retrymaxDelayTimecap, ms (0 = none)

1. Press Run to start.