Contributing Quality Gates

Quality gates are structured constraints on software development work, mapped to one of the seven GS properties. This library is community-maintained. Anyone can propose a gate.

What Makes a Good Quality Gate

A good gate is:

  • Specific: a reader knows exactly what passes and what fails
  • Automatable: the check field has a concrete command, or the manual criteria are unambiguous
  • Grounded: it enforces a constraint that has broken real projects without it
  • Minimal: one constraint per gate; if you need two checks, write two gates

A gate that says “write good code” is not a gate. A gate that says “tsc --noEmit exits 0 on every commit” is.

How to Propose a New Gate

  1. Fork this repository
  2. Copy the template below into quality-gates/gates/<your-gate-id>.yaml
  3. Fill in all required fields (see schema.yaml for the full spec)
  4. Open a pull request — title: gate: <gate-name>

The PR validation action will check schema conformance automatically. A maintainer reviews and merges.

id: your-gate-id
name: Your Gate Name
description: >
  What this gate enforces. Be specific. 1–4 sentences.
  A reader should know exactly what passes and what fails.
property: Self-describing  # or Bounded | Verifiable | Defended | Auditable | Composable | Executable
tags: [typescript]         # at least one; use "any" for language-agnostic
phase: development         # or staging | production
trigger: commit            # or pr | release
blocking: true
check:
  type: lint               # or test | script | audit | manual
  command: "your command here"

How to Supersede an Existing Gate

If your gate replaces an existing one:

  1. Add supersedes: <existing-id> to your new gate file
  2. In the same PR, add deprecated: true to the superseded gate file
  3. Explain the improvement in the PR description
# your new gate
id: typescript-strict-v2
supersedes: typescript-no-any
# ...

# the gate being replaced (edit it)
id: typescript-no-any
deprecated: true
# ...

Other Operations

Operation How
Split PR adding 2+ new gates + deprecating the original with deprecated: true
Merge PR adding 1 new gate that covers 2+ deprecated ones; deprecate the originals
Deprecate PR adding deprecated: true to the gate file; explain in PR description
Correct PR fixing description, command, or metadata; no id change needed

ForgeCraft Integration

ForgeCraft reads from this library. When a new gate is merged, all ForgeCraft projects tagged with the relevant tags receive the updated gate on the next refresh_project. Contributing a gate that ForgeCraft adopts improves the quality floor for every project in its ecosystem.

Contributors with merged gates earn additional ForgeCraft project slots. See forgecraft.dev for details.

Conduct

Be precise. Be helpful. Don’t propose gates that require proprietary tooling. Don’t propose gates you haven’t used in a real project. The goal is a library that makes every practitioner’s work better — not a list of aspirational rules.