My headless Chrome mirror kept dying on busy mornings. Here is the fix.

Short summary

Headless Chrome startup times exceed 15-second timeout when competing with CPU-intensive content jobs on shared infrastructure. Solution: raise timeout to 45 seconds and add single-shot retry with process cleanup to handle zombie Chrome processes. Acceptable trade-off for hourly background jobs; user-facing flows would require persistent Chrome sockets instead.

• •Cold Chrome launches on busy systems need 45-second deadline, not 15 seconds, to clear realistic worst-case startup windows
• •Add single-retry recovery with process cleanup to handle zombie Chrome processes blocking ports or profile directories
• •Design trade-off: acceptable for background jobs, but user-facing flows should keep Chrome warm with persistent connections

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