Definition
Plain language
Starting several copies of the same task in parallel and taking whichever finishes first.
As stated in the literature
An execution strategy in agent runtimes that launches replicated rollouts to cut tail latency on heavy-tailed UI operations.
Also called: hedging, hedge-with-replicas
Why it matters: In agent runtimes with heavy-tailed step latencies, hedging is one of the few interventions that meaningfully shrinks the worst-case user wait.
For example, instead of waiting for one slow UI action to finish, the runtime starts three in parallel and takes whichever returns first.