human-gates

name	human-gates
version	1.0
last_updated	2026-07-29
id	human-gates
one_line_purpose	Decide when to stop for Design, Security, Breakage, or Merge review.
entry_point	docs/skills/meta/human-gates/SKILL.md
category	meta
mcp_compliance_level	partial
status	active
dependencies	[]
tags	["gates","governance","escalation"]
description	When to stop and ask a human for input. Use when a PR is ready to merge, when changing CI interfaces or secrets, when a change may break consumers, or before any upstream write.
metadata	{"type":"pattern","audience":"agents","maturity":"stable"}

Human Decision Gates

Four situations require stopping and requesting human input. Never guess past them.

Gate	Stop when
Design	Architecture change, new test infrastructure, user-visible CI behavior change, changing what suites an image runs
Security	Secrets in CI, cosign/signing changes, any ublue-os/* interaction, any KDE property interaction beyond read-only, COPR sources in runner
Breakage	Removing or renaming a reusable workflow input that consuming repos depend on (e2e.yml inputs, action inputs)
Merge	PR is ready — requires GHA CI green + human approval; the ghost-lab lab gate is a no-op, do not wait for it (see below)

---

Design gate — examples

Stop before acting on any of these:

• Adding a new test suite (new directory under tests/) — affects the variant matrix, runner image, and coverage docs
• Changing which suites run for a given image in the variant matrix — affects coverage expectations for that image
• Changing the e2e.yml reusable workflow interface (adding/removing inputs, changing defaults) — consuming repos call this workflow
• Migrating from one test tool to another (e.g. adding playwright alongside behave)
• Adding a new QEMU boot mode or VM configuration

Signal: open an issue with kind/design label; describe the proposed change and ask for approval.

---

Security gate — examples

Stop before acting on any of these:

• Adding secrets: to any workflow or composite action
• Changing cosign signing steps or supply chain verification
• Adding a new third-party composite action not already in the repo
• Changing permissions: blocks to grant write access beyond contents: read + packages: write
• Any change that could affect the runner container's trust boundary

Signal: stop immediately, describe what you found, and ask the human to review before proceeding.

---

Breakage gate — examples

Stop before acting on any of these:

• Removing an input from that , , or other repos pass in their workflows