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# The Gate Wall

A model saying “done” is never evidence that the work is done. The **gate wall**
is the acceptance mechanism outside the execution that attempted the work. A run
can produce evidence; it cannot certify its own outcome.

## Why acceptance stays external

The system performing work can misunderstand the goal and confidently report the
same misunderstanding as success. That is structural, not a criticism of one
model or provider. ContextStack therefore freezes acceptance relative to the
execution being judged and records the resulting verdict independently.

External acceptance also protects against two practical failures:

- **Reward hacking.** A model can satisfy a visible proxy without satisfying the
  real outcome.
- **Human rubber-stamping.** A warning has little value if a tired reviewer still
  approves the consequence without examining the evidence.

The useful interface is not a larger transcript. It is a compact outcome,
acceptance result, and evidence bundle with the right judgment requested at the
right time.

## Every lane needs an acceptance mechanism

The gate wall is not synonymous with a software test suite. Each lane class
declares how acceptance works before cheaper routing or greater autonomy can be
trusted there.

**Safety and conformance checks stay deterministic.** Authority, data boundaries,
required fields, provenance, policy, and effect reconciliation do not become
matters of model opinion.

**Outcome quality follows the work.** Examples include:

- software: tests, static analysis, linting, coverage, security checks, and a
  verified merge artifact;
- research: source requirements, claim-to-evidence coverage, contradiction
  checks, and sampled adjudication;
- editorial: policy checks, required facts, provenance, and sampled human review;
- application operations: expected state change, idempotency, and post-action
  reconciliation.

Where quality cannot be reduced to a deterministic check, the lane defines a
human sampling rate, disagreement rule, and false-accept budget. “Use another
model to judge it” is not an independent gate by itself.

## Red is information

A rejected attempt is not erased. Its evidence and verdict return to the
commitment so the accountable Bot can repair, reroute, narrow, defer, or escalate.
That makes a failed attempt useful without turning retries into an unbounded loop.

## The markdown floor

Every order carries a human-readable objective, scope, and definition of done.
Every gate definition is versioned. That floor keeps acceptance inspectable and
portable even when a richer interface renders it.

## Current status

The software gate pack is the most mature implementation. Acceptance mechanisms
for non-code lanes and the governed live-learning loop remain incomplete. The
destination requires them before those lanes can claim cheapest-sufficient
routing or evidence-earned consequence autonomy.