When does the retry loop stop?

Background

The Orchestrator stops retrying when any of these holds:

• the Critic passed the answer, or
• there are no gaps left to re-search, or
• the attempt budget is exhausted (attempt >= max_retries).

Otherwise it re-searches the gaps and tries again.

Problem statement

Implement should_stop(passed, gaps, attempt, max_retries) returning whether to stop.

Input

• passed — bool, the Critic's verdict.
• gaps — list of remaining gap sub-questions.
• attempt — current attempt index (0-based).
• max_retries — the retry budget.

Output

Returns True if the loop should stop, else False.

Examples

Example 1 — passed

Input:  passed=True, gaps=["x"], attempt=0, max_retries=2
Output: True

Example 2 — keep going

Input:  passed=False, gaps=["x"], attempt=0, max_retries=2
Output: False

Example 3 — budget exhausted

Input:  passed=False, gaps=["x"], attempt=2, max_retries=2
Output: True

Constraints

• Stop if passed OR not gaps OR attempt >= max_retries.

Notes

• The third condition is graceful degradation: out of retries, return the best-effort answer rather than loop forever.