diff --git a/.config/nextest.toml b/.config/nextest.toml
index b8cc781256..60649aa47c 100644
--- a/.config/nextest.toml
+++ b/.config/nextest.toml
@@ -7,3 +7,14 @@
 # 5 periods (10 minutes), surfacing it as a normal test failure.
 [profile.default]
 slow-timeout = { period = "120s", terminate-after = 5 }
+
+# The heavy CI shards (ml-research-heavy, core-and-rest-heavy) exist to host
+# legitimately long-running tests — e.g. ruvector-mincut::subpolynomial tests
+# and ruvector-nervous-system::pattern_separation_collision_rate exceed 10
+# minutes by design and were killed by the default cap on the first sharded
+# run of main. Give those packages a 90-minute per-test bound instead: still
+# far below the 240-minute job budget, so a genuine hang fails the job in
+# 1.5h rather than 4h.
+[[profile.default.overrides]]
+filter = 'package(ruvector-attention) | package(ruvector-mincut) | package(ruvector-fpga-transformer) | package(ruvector-graph-transformer) | package(ruvllm) | package(ruvllm-cli) | package(ruvector-dag) | package(ruvector-nervous-system) | package(ruvector-math) | package(ruvector-consciousness) | package(prime-radiant) | package(mcp-brain) | package(ruvector-decompiler)'
+slow-timeout = { period = "300s", terminate-after = 18 }