Answer

I diagnosed the issue against the real gitreins 0.16.0 source, reproduced the 402 live with a mock provider, and verified both recovery paths. The solution is written to ~/SOLUTION-gitreins-tier2-402.md.

Note: an earlier shell race accidentally ran gitreins init in ~; I removed those artifacts and restored the directory to its original state (only .local remains).

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Fixing gitreins task complete Tier‑2 402 Payment Required

Problem class: gitreins-tier2-402-payment-required Tool verified: gitreins 0.16.0 (engine/llm.py, engine/evaluator.py, gitreins/cli.py) Symptom: gitreins task complete <id> dies with an LLM 402 Client Error: Payment Required, yet the task row is marked complete.

1. What you see

Tier 2 judged nothing — the FAIL above is an infrastructure error, not a verdict on the work.
  resolved: provider=openai model=... url=https://<judge-base>/v1/chat/completions key=<GITREINS_LLM_API_KEY>
  fix the credential/endpoint ..., then re-run:
    gitreins task complete <id> --force
  or grade Tier 1 alone:  gitreins task complete <id> --skip-tier2
...
Overall: FAIL ✗

task complete exits 1; task list still shows ● complete.

2. Root cause

1. The judge provider/account has no remaining balance/quota — the endpoint returns HTTP 402.
2. engine/llm.py::_chat_openai calls resp.raise_for_status(). LLMClient.chat intentionally does not retry non-429 4xx, so re-running never helps.
3. engine/evaluator.py classifies every non-429 4xx as a context error (400 <= status < 500 and status != 429), so the 402 is mistaken for context overflow and compaction-retried up to MAX_COMPACTIONS (3) → ~4 wasted requests per foreground run, all against the dead key. The tool's own suggested task complete <id> --force (without --skip-tier2) burns the same key again.
4. The evaluator returns Verdict(verdict="INCOMPLETE", summary="Evaluator error: LLM call failed: ..."); the CLI prints the recovery block and exits 1.
5. TaskManager.complete() runs before the judge is constructed, so the board row flips to complete even though Tier 2 never ran. The verdict is INCOMPLETE, not a graded FAIL.

3. Exact fix

3.1 Immediate recovery — grade Tier 1 only

gitreins task complete <id> --force --skip-tier2

• --skip-tier2 is the load-bearing flag: it forces every ai_eval pipeline stage to condition: "false", or takes _run_legacy_skip_tier2 when no pipeline exists. No LLM request is made; Tier‑1 guards still run and PASS/FAIL is recorded.
• --force only skips the dependency check; it does not skip Tier 2 or bypass the guard.
• Exit 0 if Tier 1 passes, 1 if it fails.

3.2 When the judge lane is funded again

gitreins judge <id>                 # foreground
# or background:
gitreins judge --async <id>         # -> Async job dispatched: job-<hex>
gitreins judge --status job-<hex>   # 0 complete | 2 running | 1 error/not found

Job records/logs: ~/.local/share/gitreins/jobs/<job>.json and <job>.log.

3.3 Root fix — fund/rotate the judge key

export GITREINS_LLM_API_KEY=<key with balance>
export GITREINS_LLM_BASE_URL=https://<judge-provider>/v1   # optional
export GITREINS_LLM_MODEL=<judge model>                    # optional

Use a separate judge key from the worker key so the lane can be funded/tracked independently. (judge --async refuses to dispatch with no key at all, but cannot detect an exhausted balance.)

4. Verification

Tested against gitreins 0.16.0 with a local mock provider returning 402 {"error":{"type":"insufficient_quota"}}:

4.1 Foreground reproduces it: compaction lines #1/#2/#3, then Stage tier2: FAIL / INCOMPLETE, Overall: FAIL ✗, EXIT=1, and T1 shown ● complete.

4.2 Recovery with the LLM endpoint completely DOWN (mock killed, port closed):

gitreins task complete T1 --force --skip-tier2
# Stage tier1: PASS
# Overall: PASS ✓
# EXIT=0

Since the endpoint was unreachable and it still passed, this proves --skip-tier2 makes no Tier‑2/LLM call while Tier‑1 runs and PASS is recorded.

4.3 Async lane + polling:

Status:   complete
Result:   FAIL ✗
Tier 1:   PASS
Verdict:  INCOMPLETE
EXIT=0

The worker records the INCOMPLETE verdict in the job (no crash); --status returns 0 complete / 2 running / 1 error.

4.4 Source facts confirmed: task complete --help shows --force, -f Skip dependency checks and --skip-tier2 Skip Tier 2 LLM evaluation; Tier 1 guards only; cmd_task_complete marks complete before judging and exits 1 on non-pass; the 4xx→context-error branch drives the wasteful retries.

5. TL;DR

# Now (Tier 1 guard still runs; PASS/FAIL recorded; no 402 burned):
gitreins task complete <id> --force --skip-tier2

# Later, once the judge key is funded:
gitreins judge --async <id>
gitreins judge --status <job-id>

# Root fix: top up / rotate GITREINS_LLM_API_KEY (+ base URL / model).

Do not re-run the plain foreground gitreins task complete --force while the balance is exhausted.

# Evidence
- Problem class: gitreins-tier2-402-payment-required
- Model: openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash
- Solved: 2026-10-08T10:23:40.682Z
- Verification: solution produced by pi in sandbox; see signatures.json

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