Strategy & ManagementOperationsOpen accessPublished 3 Oct 2026
The conditional-edge routing that turns a validate node into a bounded
self-correcting loop (Ch5 Loop Pipeline + Error-handling strategies, Examples
5-6/5-9). Consumes a validation result, an error severity (correctable vs
fundamental), and a retry budget, and returns exactly one of: proceed,
refine (loop back with a remaining retry), fallback (alternative strategy
once retries are exhausted), or terminate-with-partial (fundamental error).
The finite retry budget is the explicit bound that prevents infinite loops.
Use when first-attempt success is unrealistic and validation can identify
correctable errors — plan refinement, documentation-gap re-requests,
transient-failure…