diff --git a/e2e/playwright.config.redis.ts b/e2e/playwright.config.redis.ts
index 548cb262db..e959befc2b 100644
--- a/e2e/playwright.config.redis.ts
+++ b/e2e/playwright.config.redis.ts
@@ -4,6 +4,16 @@ import mockConfig from './playwright.config.mock';
 /** Browser scenarios whose behavior crosses the generation stream-store boundary. */
 export default defineConfig({
   ...mockConfig,
+  /**
+   * Every stream event crosses a real Redis round-trip on this lane, so waits that
+   * sit comfortably against the in-memory store run much closer to their budget —
+   * pause/resume and rehydrate paths most of all, since they replay a whole job.
+   * The suite is serial (`workers: 1`), so this is per-operation latency rather
+   * than contention, and it is why this lane reports flaky runs the memory shards
+   * never produce. Give it a larger default assertion budget and one more retry.
+   */
+  retries: process.env.CI ? 3 : 0,
+  expect: { ...mockConfig.expect, timeout: 20_000 },
   testMatch: [
     /completion\.spec\.ts/,
     /deferred-tools-hitl\.spec\.ts/,