quickstart.md

Quickstart

skillgate is a deterministic finish-line gate: it blocks git commit / git push / npm publish until your definition-of-done actually passes. No model in the loop.

1. Audit (zero install, read-only)

See what your agent could cut right now, with no config:

npx @reneza/skillgate@latest audit

This writes nothing. It scores the repo against built-in defaults (or your .skillgate/done.yaml if you have one) and exits non-zero if a corner is cuttable.

2. Define "done"

npx @reneza/skillgate@latest init     # writes .skillgate/done.yaml

Edit it. Each entry under gates: is one deterministic check. See the spec reference for every gate type, and schema/done.schema.json for editor autocomplete (the generated file already points at it via a # yaml-language-server: modeline).

3. Check

npx @reneza/skillgate@latest check    # exit 0 = all gates pass, 1 = something unmet

4. Wire it into the finish line

Pick the path that matches how far you want the guarantee to reach — Claude Code hook, pre-commit, CI, or a retry loop. All of them enforce the same .skillgate/done.yaml. See recipes.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	All gates passed (or, for drift, everything in sync)
1	At least one gate failed / drift detected — the finish line is blocked
2	Usage error: no spec found, unknown command, or a spec that failed to load

--json is available on check, audit, and drift for machine-readable output; the exit code is unchanged. After creating .skillgate/done.yaml, wire it into the layer you use and verify the result:

skillgate install claude-code       # or opencode, github-actions, pre-commit, all
skillgate doctor claude-code

Run from any directory inside the active Git worktree; Skillgate resolves the nearest policy and evaluates paths from that worktree root.