Gate-escape archive

Per Section 17.3.10, this directory holds one entry per gate escape: a Sev 0 / 1 / 2 incident traceable to a missed CI gate.

The archive is what makes the gates-as-review model sustainable. The model assumes that gates are strong enough that any MR which passes them is safe to merge. That assumption is only honest if every escape becomes a permanent improvement to the gate set.

When to write an entry

A gate-escape entry is required when:

• A Sev 0 / 1 / 2 incident occurred (per Section 17.6 once locked).
• Root-cause analysis identifies a gate (CI check, lint rule, test, type check, security scan, etc.) that should have caught the underlying defect but did not.
• The gate either does not exist, or exists but missed the case.

If the incident's root cause is operational (e.g., capacity, third-party outage) and not a code defect, no gate-escape entry is required - the postmortem captures it.

Procedure

1. Open the incident postmortem (docs/postmortems/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md) per Section 17.6.
2. In the postmortem's "Action items" section, identify which actions are gate-strengthening.
3. Create a gate-escape entry at docs/standards/gate-escapes/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md summarizing:
   • The defect that shipped
   • The gate that missed it (or the gate that should exist)
   • The fix to the gate (new check, strengthened threshold, new test)
   • A regression test that would now catch this defect
   • Cross-reference to the postmortem
4. Update this index.

Entry template

# Gate escape: <short title>

- **Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
- **Incident severity:** Sev 0 | Sev 1 | Sev 2
- **Postmortem:** [`docs/postmortems/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md`](../../postmortems/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md)
- **Domain:** <domain from Section 17.1>

## What shipped

<2-3 sentences describing the defect>

## Gate that missed

<Which gate(s) from Section 17.3.2 should have caught this. If no gate
exists for this category, say so explicitly.>

## Gate fix

<What changed: a new gate added, a threshold tightened, a new lint rule, a
new test pattern, etc. Include MR link.>

## Regression test

<Pointer to the test that now covers this case. The test must fail without
the fix and pass with it.>

Quarterly review

Per Section 17.2.10 Layer 3, all entries in this archive are reviewed quarterly. The review looks for:

• Repeat patterns (same gate category missing repeatedly)
• Gate categories that consistently miss (signal that the gate is structurally weak)
• Gates that fire often but mostly false-positive (signal that the gate is too aggressive and may be ignored)

If a category recurs, the gate set is restructured rather than patched.

Index

Date	Severity	Title	Gate fix
(no entries yet)