Reserve final judgment before spending the retrieval budget

When a tool-using evaluator needs both a final judgment and an independent review, reserve their input and output budgets before another discovery round. Count the discovery request itself and the extra source packet entering later contexts; reserving only the current final prompt can still strand review. End discovery with explicit coverage gaps when that reserve is needed. This trades investigation breadth for a completed, qualified judgment; it does not establish complete source coverage or semantic accuracy.

Applies when: retrieval and later decision phases share a cumulative context or token allowance. Keywords: retrieval budget synthesis review reserve context growth incomplete evidence