cw-gates

Pick the smallest evidence that answers the actual risk, then quote the real output. This repo has been burned twice by the alternative: an exit code mistaken for a pass, and a harness whose scoring line silently reported unevaluated rows as green. Assertions without command output are not evidence.

Stage 3 of the loop: cw-orient → cw-slice → gates → cw-dogfood → cw-land → cw-handoff.

When to use

• Before saying "done", "green", "passing", "fixed", or "ready to land".
• Before a dogfood build, never install an ungated binary.
• When asked to "run the gates" or to prove a change is safe.

For release work, follow docs/RELEASE_CHECKLIST.md; it adds the version-drift gate and the exhaustive release validation on top of this ladder, and cw-dogfood owns the manual TUI QA targets.

Workflow

Climb only as far as the risk requires. Say where you stopped and what you skipped.

Native Rust builds go through scripts/dev-test.sh or scripts/dev-cargo.sh, which take the machine's build slot (scripts/build-lock.py; at most two native builds per machine). Raw cargo bypasses the lock.

Rung 1, always, and cheap

cargo fmt --all -- --check
git diff --check

Rung 2, the area that owns the change

scripts/dev-test.sh maps an area or a source path to the fastest correct invocation, and applies the isolated build-dir topology (docs/BUILD_PERFORMANCE.md):

scripts/dev-test.sh --list
scripts/dev-test.sh crates/command-contract/src/elapsed.rs      # path → area + filter
scripts/dev-test.sh tui tools::                    # area + filter
scripts/dev-test.sh config