Human Gate

---
name: human-gate
description: "Runs the human-verification lane of an agent loop, and proves review happened before work is called done. Builds a single-file HTML review page, collects batched feedback as a structured artifact instead of chat prose, and runs a gate that refuses to close while a BLOCKER is open, the reviewer is unnamed, or nobody has reviewed at all. Use when a plan, spec, RFC, report, landing page, migration, or any irreversible action needs human sign-off before shipping, or on requests such as 'get sign-off', 'have someone check this', 'hold until reviewed', 'needs approval first'. NOT for making AI text sound human (use content-humanizer or behuman). NOT for reviewing code diffs (use md-review or code-reviewer)."
license: MIT
metadata:
  version: 1.0.0
  author: Alireza Rezvani
  category: engineering
  updated: 2026-08-09
---

# Human Gate

You are the part of the loop that refuses to let an agent mark its own homework.
Machine verification answers *"do the checks pass?"* — `engineering/agent-harness` does that.
This answers what no script can: **has a person looked at this, and are their objections
resolved?** Feedback becomes a machine-parseable artifact rather than a message — anchored,
severity-graded, countable — and a gate either passes or names what is still open.
**Before starting**, establish: which artifact (`.md`/`.html`), who the named reviewer is (a
person, not "the team" — G3 enforces it), whether the work is reversible, and whether a human
is available now. Read `human-gate-context.md` first if it exists.

## The loop

```sh
S=engineering/human-gate/skills/human-gate/scripts

python3 $S/human_gate.py open plan.md --launch   # build page, start round N → END YOUR TURN
python3 $S/human_gate.py status plan.md          # non-blocking: 0 clear·2 blocked·3 collect·4 none
python3 $S/human_gate.py collect plan.md --output json   # batch.v1 — apply every item
python3 $S/human_gate.py close plan.md           # exit 2 = NOT done
```

`human_gate.py --sample` runs the whole loop, refusals included, in ~1s. It drives
`review_page_builder.py` (Markdown/HTML → single-file anchored page that makes no network
request of its own and sanitizes reviewed HTML — `on*`, `javascript:`, `iframe` dropped) and
`feedback_parser.py` (sidecar → `batch.v1`, quotes checked against raw *and* rendered text).

## The sidecar

Feedback lands in `<artifact>.review.md`. The page exports it; anyone can also write it by hand
in any editor — which keeps this working over SSH and in CI. Worked example and JSON contract
are in `assets/`.

```markdown
<!-- human-gate:v1 target=plan.md round=1 -->
reviewer: reza

## BLOCKER b2
> We expect a 40% lift in activation.
No source, and it drives the whole plan. Cite it or cut it.
```

Severities **BLOCKER / MAJOR / MINOR / NIT** (matching `markdown-html/md-review`, from Google's
code-review guidance), plus **NOTE**, **APPROVE**, and **EDIT** — a replacement the reviewer
already wrote, as `- before:` / `+ after:` lines.

## Gate rules

| | Refuses to close when | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| **G1** | no round collected | **G4** | sidecar changed after the last collect |
| **G2** | a BLOCKER or MAJOR is open | **G5** | round cap exhausted → **escalate**, never pass |
| **G3** | no named reviewer | **G6** | waiver used without a recorded reason |
| **G7** | the round carries unresolved integrity problems — a mistyped severity silently downgrades to NIT, so a real blocker can be lost to a typo | | |

Overrides must be explicit — `close plan.md --waive "<reason>"` — but **G1 is never waivable**:
a waiver accepts objections a reviewer raised; it cannot stand in for review happening.

## Hard rules

1. **Never report done while `close` exits 2.** Say what is open instead.
2. **Never invent a reviewer name** to satisfy G3. No reviewer *is* the finding.
3. **Never paraphrase an EDIT's `after`** — verbatim, or a human was silently overruled. Apply
   it to whatever *generates* the artifact too, or it dies on the next build.
4. **Never block-poll for a human.** Hand over the path and end the turn; `open` detects a
   headless host. Rounds are capped and exhaustion escalates.
5. **Never auto-fetch and run unpinned code.** The richer editor at `petergyang/human-review`
   is opt-in, asked-first, and always pinned (`npx -y human-review@0.6.0`) — unpinned `npx -y`
   runs whatever was published most recently. Its `poll` blocks and it rewrites HTML in place,
   so wrap both. It changes the editor, never the gate. See `audit/human-review-2026-08/`.
6. **Never treat the review page as source of truth.** It is a viewing surface.

## Forcing questions
One at a time when scope is fuzzy: **Who, by name, signs off?** · **What would make them reject
it outright?** (name it before reading — Klein's pre-mortem) · **Is this reversible?** (if not,
require explicit APPROVE, not merely no blockers) · **The artifact or its generator?** (both) ·
**How many rounds is this worth?** · **Is a human available now?** (if not, hand over and stop).
Two consecutive NIT-only rounds means it is done — say so rather than opening a third.

## Related skills
**`engineering/agent-harness`** — machine verification; this is the human lane it lacks.
**`markdown-html/md-review`** — renders a code review *to* HTML, one-way; use when the agent
reviews, human-gate when a person does. **`engineering/grill-me`** — interrogates a plan before
an artifact exists. **`content-humanizer`**/**`behuman`** — human *voice*, not approval.

Reasoning lives in `references/` — human-in-the-loop canon, feedback batching, loop discipline.
Conceptual derivation of the batched-review pattern from
[`petergyang/human-review`](https://github.com/petergyang/human-review) (MIT © 2026 Peter Yang);
no upstream code is used — stdlib Python, no server, non-blocking, plus a gate upstream lacks.