Approval gates
Every point where the Pocketto pipeline stops for your approval, plus the independent review gates that stop for a reviewer who is not the author.
Pocketto distinguishes two kinds of gates. User authorization gates stop and wait for you. Independent review gates stop and wait for a reviewer that is not the author. You are not asked to approve its findings, but you are informed and consulted when recovery is exhausted.
User authorization gates
| # | Gate | Where | What your approval covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spec approval | Grinding handoff | The spec's problem statement, scenarios, and constraints. Authorizes the handoff to planning, never implementation. |
| 2 | Plan approval | Planning handoff | Generation of derived execution artifacts (index.md, task files, phase manifests). Never implementation. |
| 3 | Execution authorization | Structuring handoff | Starting development. Asked once; a clear prior instruction covers it. |
| 4 | Education choice | Development startup in an Education repo | Whether you implement with guidance or dispatch subagents. |
| 5 | Closeout authorization | Closing | Advancing a reviewed phase and closing the plan. A passing verdict alone is not authorization. |
| 6 | Push consent | Enterprise phase publication | Durable (--push-consent phase-branches) or per-commit (consent-push --sha <40-hex>); never assumed from credentials. |
Rules that protect these gates:
- Approvals are not re-asked when an earlier instruction already covered them. You are never prompted twice for the same decision.
- Silence is not approval. A consequential choice you have not made gets a question.
- If you explicitly skip a gate or choose a simpler workflow, the agent honors it and reports which checks were skipped. Nothing claims a skipped gate passed.
Independent review gates (not user gates)
These run without you; their purpose is that no agent grades its own work.
| Review | Stage | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|
| Advisor curation | Pitching | Independent advisor (LLM-to-LLM) |
| Edge-case hunter | Grinding, after GWT scenarios | Read-only subagent |
| Spec reviewer | Planning, on the plan | Read-only subagent |
| Test-strategy audit | Planning, only when triggers fire | Read-only subagent |
| In-loop audit | Development, per task after DONE | Read-only auditor (mechanical gate first) |
| Phase-level pass | Development, after all tasks DONE | Read-only subagent |
The main agent never judges code; implementers never self-report quality as evidence.
Bounded recovery
Every review gate has a bounded recovery contract: after the initial attempt, at most two materially different correction/review rounds. Reaching the cap is a mandatory user checkpoint (RECOVERY_CHECKPOINT), not a silent pass and not a BLOCKED verdict. It preserves the unresolved findings, the strategies tried, and one proposed next strategy, and waits for your explicit authorization to open another bounded window.
What does not burn a round: a clean pass, and auditor infrastructure failures (those get a bounded reroute: fresh auditor → advisor fallback → report the exact human action needed).
BLOCKED is reserved for a genuine human dependency: a decision, access, information, or authorization the agent cannot obtain. Every blocked report names the dependency, the evidence, and the concrete unblocking action, and safe independent work continues.
Example
Illustrative: the spec reviewer twice returns findings on the same task. The plan is corrected with a materially different strategy, re-reviewed, and findings remain. The skill stops at RECOVERY_CHECKPOINT, lists both rounds and the unresolved finding, and asks whether to authorize another bounded window. It neither hands off an unapproved plan nor silently drops the finding.
Related documentation
Closing
pocket-closing reconciles task verdicts with the execution log, advances only passing phases, appends closeout.md, and closes the plan when you ask.
Execution artifacts and lifecycle
What the Pocketto pipeline writes to disk at each stage, when each file appears, and which command owns it, so the paper trail outlives the chat.