One task reached thirteen attempts because an architect hold was treated as ordinary implementation feedback.
The product boundary had changed during acceptance. The durable design recorded the amendment, but the active dispatch kept injecting the original contract into coder, reviewer and auditor turns. Each pass could be internally consistent and still implement the wrong decision.
A hold which requires replanning needs to stop automatic dispatch. The amended contract must receive a new identity, clearances against the old version must stop counting, and a human must explicitly resume the run after the named prerequisites exist.
Retries are useful when the implementation is wrong. They are destructive when the work packet itself is stale.