I saw that sometimes sn_authd exits who knows why.
For example, if you cancel auth create command with Ctrl+C.
So it good also to check if it is active before each command.
Maybe it happened with your tests.
See the Anti Entropy explanation above.
I do not see relation to timeouts.
(I know that timeouts are offtopic here, but offtopic is everywhere on this forum and no one cares, so no problems actually)