Run this gate on every finding you have generated, before formatting output or delivering results. The gate catches false positives, noise, and miscalibrated severity — the most common failure modes of single-pass review.
When to Use
- After the reviewer agent generates findings (Step 2.5).
- After DX or UX review skills produce their finding lists.
- Any time a skill produces actionable recommendations that a human will read.
Gate Checklist
For each finding, answer every question. Be honest — a dropped false positive is worth more than a delivered one.
| # | Question | Fail means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Is it actionable? The author can do something concrete. No "consider", "might want to", or "could be improved" without a specific fix. | Finding is vague noise |
| 2 | Did I read the surrounding code? Not just the diff hunk — the full function, the caller, the guard clause three lines up. | Finding may be wrong |
| 3 | Is severity calibrated? A style nit is never "required." A SQL injection is never "suggestion." Re-check the severity assignment against the actual impact. | Severity is misleading |
| 4 | Are file path and line number accurate? Verify the cited location against actual file content. A finding pointing to the wrong line is worse than no finding. | Finding is unlocatable |
| 5 | Does this duplicate linter/formatter/type-checker output? If the project's toolchain would catch this automatically, do not flag it. Focus on semantic issues the toolchain cannot see. | Finding is redundant |
| 6 | Is this actually true? Re-read the function in full context. Check: is the "bug" handled elsewhere? Is the "unused import" used in a type annotation? Is the "missing null check" guarded by the caller? Is the "race condition" prevented by a lock you didn't notice? | Finding is a false positive |
Gate Rules
| Check failures | Action |
|---|---|
| 2 or more | Drop the finding entirely. It is not worth the reader's time. |
| Exactly 1 | Downgrade severity by one level (required → suggestion, suggestion → nitpick). Note which check failed. |
| 0 | Finding passes. Deliver as-is. |
When downgrading, append a brief note so the reader knows why:
(Downgraded: severity recalibrated — style concern, not a correctness issue.)
Output
After running the gate on all findings, emit a brief summary before the findings themselves:
### Quality Gate
- Findings reviewed: N
- Dropped: N (reason per drop)
- Downgraded: N
- Passed: N
List each dropped finding with a one-line reason so the reviewer can audit the gate:
- Dropped: "Missing error handling in fetchUser" — false positive, error is caught by caller middleware (check 6)
- Dropped: "Unused variable `config`" — linter would catch this (check 5) + not actionable without context (check 1)
Anti-Patterns
- Do NOT skip the gate because "all findings look fine." Run it mechanically on every finding.
- Do NOT pass findings that say "consider" or "might want to" without a concrete fix. Rewrite them or drop them.
- Do NOT inflate the passed count by being lenient. The gate's value comes from its strictness.
- Do NOT run the gate on pre-existing issues. Those are informational and bypass the gate entirely.