You would assume that if the agent running that task is no longer reporting it, these would transition to some timeout state.

Which version are you running Looking at the release note for 3.1.8 published yesterday it looks like there is a new feature (Heartbeats) that would help with your problem https://github.com/PrefectHQ/prefect/releases/tag/3.1.8

FYI, doesn't appear 3.1.8 is available in pypi. 3.1.9.dev1 is though

I'm on 3.1.6 atm - ill take a look at that though, thanks