| name | thumbgate-rules |
| description | List the active ThumbGate prevention rules, reliability rules, and the promoted lessons behind them, so the user can see which guardrails are currently protecting this project and WHY each one exists. Reads the live rule and lesson stores via the prevention_rules, get_reliability_rules, and search_lessons MCP tools (CLI fallback `npx thumbgate rules`). Use when the user says "what is ThumbGate protecting me from", "show my rules", "show my gates", "what has the agent learned", "list active guardrails", or "what's blocked here". Do NOT use to CREATE a new rule (use the thumbgate-guard skill), to see runtime enforcement counts of what actually fired (use the thumbgate-blocked skill), or to diagnose whether ThumbGate is wired up at all (use the thumbgate-doctor skill). |
ThumbGate Rules
Show the guardrails currently in force for this project: the auto-promoted prevention rules, the
reliability rules, and the lessons they came from — so the user sees not just what is blocked
but why.
This skill wraps existing ThumbGate capability and adds no new logic — it reads the live rule
and lesson stores.
Workflow
- List active rules with the
prevention_rules MCP tool (CLI fallback: npx thumbgate rules).
- Pull reliability rules with
get_reliability_rules to show which tool-call shapes are gated.
- Surface the lesson behind each rule with
search_lessons, so the user sees the origin, not
just the block.
- Present a compact table (see the example below).
- If there are zero active rules, point the user to the thumbgate-guard skill to promote
their first one.
Field-by-field tool output and how rules map to lessons are in
references/rule-stores.md.
Example
Input: "what is ThumbGate protecting me from in this repo?"
Action: call prevention_rules + get_reliability_rules, enrich each with search_lessons, then:
| Rule / Gate | Blocks | From lesson | State |
|---|
| no-force-push-main | git push --force to main | overwrote a teammate's commit (2026-05) | active |
| verify-before-deploy | deploy without npm test | shipped a broken build | active |
Troubleshooting
- Empty list: no rules promoted yet — use the thumbgate-guard skill, or
npx thumbgate rules
returns nothing because the lesson store is fresh.
prevention_rules errors / MCP unreachable: fall back to npx thumbgate rules, then run the
thumbgate-doctor skill to check wiring.- A rule exists but never blocks: that's an enforcement question — check the thumbgate-blocked
skill for fire counts and the thumbgate-doctor skill for hook installation.
Quality checklist (self-verify before delivering)
