Judge reason

No PaymentIntent was ever created. Saved evidence (evidence/01_create.json, evidence/00_auth_check.json) contains only Stripe's HTTP 401 {"type":"invalid_request_error","message":"Invalid API Key provided: sk_test_***c9ab"} for both POST /v1/payment_intents and GET /v1/balance; transcript lines 16, 20, 35, 41, 54 show the same 401 across four attempts. Setup was completed: evidence proves the correctly composed documented curl create call (amount=1099, currency=usd, payment_method_types[]=card, metadata[order_id]=order_1099) reached Stripe itself (well-formed Stripe JSON error, not a proxy error) after network egress to api.stripe.com was approved. None of the success criteria are met - no pi_ id, no client_secret, no status, and confirm/retrieve were never attempted. The agent did not fabricate or mock a response and did not invoke benchmark-success. The failure is a concrete external prerequisite: Stripe's documented API requires a valid secret key, the supplied key was rejected, and a re-request returned a byte-identical key (sha256 match, 54 chars, non-standard Stripe key length).

Attempt record

1. 3:33Answered from saved key: Working Stripe test-mode secret keyno wait
2. 4:21Blocked by a prerequisiteStripe test-mode secret key supplied by the harness is invalid - Stripe returns HTTP 401 'Invalid API Key provided' on every endpoint, and a re-request returned the identical key, so no authenticated Payment Intents call was possible.