Review gates: a checklist before merging

A review gate is a short list of things that must be true before a change goes live. Run through it yourself, or have the AI confirm each item:

• I read the diff and understand what changed and why
• The change is scoped to what I actually asked for
• Tests pass (and new behavior has a test)
• Type check and linter are clean
• No secrets, debug logs, or commented-out code left behind
• No safety checks were quietly removed
• I tried the change myself, at least the happy path

If you can't check a box, you're not done.

The checklist is deliberately short because a gate you skip is no gate at all. The temptation, especially when you're moving fast and the change "looks fine," is to wave it through. Resist that on anything user-facing. A useful trick is to make the AI fill it in for you — paste the list and ask: "Go through this review gate for the change you just made. For each item, say PASS or FAIL with one line of evidence." It can't honestly write "tests pass" without having run them, and forcing it to cite evidence per line turns a vague "looks good" into something you can audit.