| name | agents-shipgate |
| description | Use when the user wants to run the prominent Agents Shipgate flows — `shipgate check`, `agents-shipgate verify`, or `shipgate audit --host` — for AI agent capability changes, PR release readiness, or coding-agent host grants. |
Agents Shipgate
Agents Shipgate is the deterministic merge gate for AI-generated agent capability changes — a local-first, static Tool-Use Readiness review. It reads shipgate.yaml plus local tool sources and writes deterministic reports as Markdown, JSON, SARIF, and supporting Release Evidence Packets.
Use this skill when a task touches agent tools, MCP exports, OpenAPI specs, prompts that constrain tool use, permissions/scopes, approval or confirmation policies, shipgate.yaml, Shipgate CI, or agents-shipgate-reports/report.json.
Do not use it for general linting, runtime monitoring, evals, model-output quality, or runtime guardrail enforcement. Shipgate is static-only: no agent execution, no tool calls, no LLM calls, no MCP server connections, and no telemetry by default.
Workflow
- For local checks, verifier runs, host audits, and supporting recovery commands, read
references/recipes.md.
- For reading
report.json, summarizing release decisions, or deciding what may be auto-applied, read references/report-reading.md.
- Before running Shipgate CLI commands, require a CLI whose
agents-shipgate contract --json reports minimum_control_contract_version: 14: run command -v agents-shipgate, agents-shipgate --version, and agents-shipgate contract --json. If it is missing or stale, tell the user to install or upgrade agents-shipgate. The Codex plugin supplies workflows, not the scanner binary.
- Set
AGENTS_SHIPGATE_AGENT_MODE=1 before running Shipgate commands so errors include structured next_action JSON.
- Default first-time CI to advisory mode. Do not enable release-blocking CI or save a baseline until a human has reviewed current findings.
- For local agent control, run
shipgate check --agent codex --workspace . --format agent-boundary-json and read the stdout shipgate.agent_boundary_result/v1 object. Switch on control.state; follow only control.next_action, control.allowed_next_commands, and control.human_review. Treat decision as diagnostic context only.
- Before editing
shipgate.yaml, Shipgate CI, AGENTS/CLAUDE/Cursor rules, policy packs, baselines, waivers, suppressions, Codex hooks/config, Codex plugin manifests, .mcp.json, .app.json, or SKILL.md, plan to run agents-shipgate verify before completion and route trust-root review to a human when the verifier requires it.
- For full PR verification, validate
agents-shipgate-reports/verification-receipt.json first, then read agent-handoff.json and switch on control.state; read verifier.json for detailed control state, verify-run.json for the request graph, and report.json for reviewer detail. report.json.release_decision.decision remains the release gate.
- Auto-apply only high-confidence safe patches. Do not auto-assert action effect, action authority, agent bindings, approval, confirmation, idempotency, broad-scope, prohibited-action, or runtime-trace evidence.
- Ensure
.gitignore covers agents-shipgate-reports/ before committing.
Fast Paths
- CLI preflight: run
command -v agents-shipgate, agents-shipgate --version, and agents-shipgate contract --json. Continue only when the installed CLI reports minimum_control_contract_version: 14; if it is missing or stale, ask the user to install or upgrade agents-shipgate.
- Agent-native check: run
shipgate check --agent codex --workspace . --format agent-boundary-json; read only the JSON result for continue/repair/stop routing.
- Agent-related PR/CI diff: run
agents-shipgate verify --workspace . --config shipgate.yaml --base origin/main --head HEAD --ci-mode advisory --format json after making the base ref available. For local uncommitted work, omit --base/--head so the working tree is scanned. verify never fetches.
- Existing manifest / ongoing PR: run
agents-shipgate verify --workspace . --config shipgate.yaml --ci-mode advisory --format json.
- Unconfigured repo or uncertain relevance: run
agents-shipgate verify --preview --json.
- Host grants: run
shipgate audit --host --json --out agents-shipgate-reports/host-grants.json.
Boundaries
- Do not claim a finding is fixed without re-running
agents-shipgate verify and reporting the new merge verdict and release decision.
- Do not self-approve trust-root changes; when
agents-shipgate verify returns human review required, surface it to a human.
- Before finishing an agent-related diff, run
shipgate check --agent codex --workspace . --format agent-boundary-json and follow shipgate.agent_boundary_result/v1.control.state. Only complete permits completion; a human route cannot be cleared by conversation-level acknowledgement.
- Do not bypass the verifier by suppressing findings, lowering severity, expanding baselines or waivers, removing Shipgate CI, or weakening agent instructions; verify-mode
SHIP-VERIFY-* checks make those trust-root edits release-visible.
- Do not silently suppress findings. Suppressions require a non-empty
reason.
- Do not commit generated reports.
- Do not edit the upstream
agents-shipgate check implementation unless the user is working in the Agents Shipgate repo itself.