speckit-red-team-gate

name	speckit-red-team-gate
description	Principle VIII gate — check whether the current feature spec qualifies for red team, and block /speckit.plan if a qualifying spec has no findings report on record.
compatibility	Requires spec-kit project structure with .specify/ directory
metadata	{"author":"github-spec-kit","source":"red-team:commands/red-team-gate.md"}

User Input

$ARGUMENTS

Purpose

This command is a gate, not a workflow. It runs automatically as the before_plan hook of the red-team extension and is invoked by /speckit.plan before any planning work begins.

The gate enforces the constitutional rule that functional specs matching one or more red team Trigger Criteria MUST have a red team findings report on record before /speckit.plan proceeds. See your project's constitution (Principle VIII — Red Team Qualifying Specs Before Plan — if adopted) or the canonical protocol reference at https://github.com/ashbrener/spec-kit-red-team/blob/main/docs/protocol.md.

Outline

1. Resolve the spec under consideration.

   • If $ARGUMENTS contains a path to a spec file, use that.
   • Else, attempt to determine the current feature from the working branch via the .specify/scripts/bash/check-prerequisites.sh --json --paths-only helper. Parse FEATURE_SPEC from its output.
   • If neither resolves, print Red-Team Gate: SKIPPED (no spec in context) and return PROCEED.

2. Scan the spec for Red Team Trigger Criteria. Read the spec file. For each of the six categories below, mark it as triggered if ANY listed keyword (case-insensitive, word-boundary) appears in the spec body. Record which categories matched — this becomes part of the gate output for transparency.

   Category	Example keyword hits (not exhaustive)
   money_path	fee, fees, amount, allocation, carry, carried interest, preferred return, management fee, waterfall, price, currency, invoice, AUM, IRR, MOIC, valuation
   regulatory_path	KYC, AML, GDPR, SEC, FCA, AIFMD, Reg S-P, compliance, regulator, audit report, investor disclosure, lawful basis, subject rights
   ai_llm	LLM, Claude, GPT, prompt, inference, classification, extraction, summarisation, summarization, scoring, model output, AI-generated, AI-assisted
   immutability_audit	immutable, append-only, permanent, never deleted, audit log, audit trail, tamper, hash chain, version chain, previous_.*_id
   multi_party	approval, approve, IC, Investment Committee, two-person, partner approval, override, sign-off, sign off, role-based, permission gate
   contracts	contract, interface, handoff, hand-off, upstream, downstream, API boundary, envelope, payload, request shape, response shape, schema

   Keyword matching is intentionally liberal — a false positive on the gate just means a spec that did not need red team is still offered the choice. A false negative silently waives a required gate, which is the failure mode the gate exists to prevent.

3. Check for a findings report.

   • Glob specs/<feature-id>/red-team-findings-*.md in the repo root.
   • Also check 99_Archive/red-team/<feature-id>/ in case the spec has already graduated and the findings were archived.
   • If the project uses a different path convention, honour its extension.yml config.findings_glob override (if set). Otherwise use the default above.

4. Emit the gate decision.

   • No category matched →

     Red-Team Gate: NOT REQUIRED
     Triggers matched: none
     Outcome: PROCEED
     

     Return PROCEED.

   • At least one category matched AND a findings report exists →

     Red-Team Gate: SATISFIED
     Triggers matched: <comma-separated list>
     Findings report: <path>
     Outcome: PROCEED
     

     Return PROCEED.

   • At least one category matched AND no findings report exists →

     Red-Team Gate: BLOCKED (Constitution Principle VIII — qualifying spec without findings on record)
     
     Triggers matched: <comma-separated list>
     Expected: specs/<feature-id>/red-team-findings-*.md (or 99_Archive/red-team/<feature-id>/)
     Found: (none)
     
     Options:
     
       1. Run the red team now:
            /speckit.red-team.run specs/<feature-id>/spec.md
          Community extension — `specify extension add red-team` if not already installed.
     
       2. Explicit opt-out: re-run /speckit.plan with the argument
            --skip-red-team-gate: <reason>
          The reason is recorded verbatim in the plan's Constitution Check section
          as an Accepted Risk tagged [red-team-skipped]. A waived gate is itself
          an Accepted Risk and will be surfaced to the user in the plan summary.
     
     Outcome: HALT
     

     Return HALT. /speckit.plan MUST NOT proceed to its Outline step.

5. Respect an explicit opt-out. If $ARGUMENTS contains the token --skip-red-team-gate: followed by a non-empty reason, emit:

   Red-Team Gate: WAIVED
   Triggers matched: <list>
   Reason: <verbatim>
   Outcome: PROCEED (record as Accepted Risk in plan Constitution Check, tagged [red-team-skipped])
   

   Return PROCEED. The caller is responsible for carrying the [red-team-skipped] marker into the plan artefact's Constitution Check section.

Non-Goals

• The gate does NOT run the red team itself. That is /speckit.red-team.run.
• The gate does NOT modify any file. It emits a decision and returns control.
• The gate does NOT interpret condition expressions on itself — it is a pass-through gate invoked by the before_plan hook mechanism.
• The gate is idempotent: running it twice on the same spec produces the same decision.

Implementation Notes

• Keyword scans are simple substring / word-boundary checks. Do NOT attempt semantic understanding of the spec — the scan is deliberately over-broad so that the only false outcome is "run a red team you didn't strictly need to," never "skip a red team you did need."
• Keyword lists above are starting defaults. Projects customising their red-team-lenses.yml MAY add their own trigger keywords via the trigger_keywords block in that file (v1.1 feature). For v1.0.2 the gate uses the built-in defaults.
• The gate runs against the spec file only. It does NOT walk the full documentation tree. This keeps runtime in the single-digit-milliseconds range — the gate is free, invoked on every /speckit.plan.