Pattern: Quality Gates

Category: Orchestration Source: Internal usage (Role Factory, QA Engineer), FOR-0012 (Goal Setting and Monitoring) Status: Active

When to Use

When a multi-stage process needs checkpoints to ensure each stage's output meets minimum quality standards before proceeding. Prevents bad outputs from propagating through a pipeline and accumulating errors.

How It Works

• Define explicit quality criteria for each stage's output (scoring rubric, checklist, acceptance tests)
• At the end of each stage, evaluate the output against these criteria
• If the output passes the gate, proceed to the next stage
• If it fails, take corrective action:
  • Return to the previous stage for rework
  • Route to an improvement loop (evaluator-optimizer)
  • Escalate to a human for decision
• Log gate results for traceability and trend analysis
• Optionally set different thresholds for different risk levels

Example

The Role Factory has explicit gate thresholds: a role scoring below 10/15 returns to DESIGN (major rework). A role scoring 10-12 enters AUTO-IMPROVE (automated fixing). A role scoring 13+ proceeds to DEPLOY. These gates ensure only quality roles reach production.

Tradeoffs

Pro	Con
Prevents low-quality outputs from reaching production	Adds latency at each checkpoint
Clear, measurable standards replace subjective assessment	Overly strict gates block progress
Creates accountability and traceability	Requires well-defined criteria — vague gates are useless
Enables different handling for different severity levels	Gate maintenance overhead as standards evolve

Factory Usage

• Role Factory TEST stage: Score-based gates (< 10 = redesign, 10-12 = auto-improve, 13+ = deploy).
• QA Engineer validation (departments/quality-assurance/qa-engineer-quinn/agent.md): Quinn validates roles against a 7-point checklist before certification.
• Production Line quality gates: Each production line has a quality-gates.md defining checkpoints between stages.