Drop planner LLM (always probe for file), merge evidence into solver, make formatter pure-Python: ~8-12 calls/question -> ~3-6. Add max_tool_rounds cap so research-heavy questions terminate fast (no more 300s timeouts). Pin openai/gpt-oss-120b on the gateway (fast + reliable tool/structured); force function_calling for structured output since routed models ignore json_schema.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
