Does the R in repeat actually require getting all your money back out?

BRRRR has come up in my reading for a few months now and the same disagreement between sources keeps showing up, so I want to see how this room splits.

The classic version says the point of the refinance is to pull your entire original investment back out so you can go buy the next one with the same dollars. Under that framing, if you leave 20k in the deal, you didn't really do a BRRRR, you did a slow rental purchase with extra construction risk. The whole reason to take on rehab work and expensive short term money is the capital recovery at the end. No recovery, no reason.

The other version I read says full recovery was a feature of cheap refinancing and it isn't the definition of the strategy. Under that framing, what matters is whether the property you end up owning is worth owning. If you bought at a discount, forced value through the rehab, and you're holding an asset with real equity and rent that covers the new debt service, leaving 15 or 20k in is just a normal down payment on a property you got for less than retail. You recycled most of your capital, which is still better than starting from zero each time.

The case for the strict version is discipline. If you accept trapped capital as normal, you'll accept it on every deal and your portfolio growth stalls while you tell yourself it's fine. The case for the loose version is that a rigid rule makes you walk away from perfectly good properties in a rate environment that isn't going to ask your permission.

I genuinely don't know which side I land on, which is why I'm asking rather than arguing. Where do you sit?