Quality Gate Skill

{WORKSPACE} = timestamped run directory provided by the orchestrator.

Purpose

Catch flawed premises and wrong analytical directions EARLY, before they cascade through the pipeline. A critic that targets the wrong weakness wastes the entire strategist phase. A gap analyzer that flags non-issues adds noise.

Two Layers of Validation

The orchestrator runs schema validation first (simple file existence + JSON parse check). Only if that passes does the quality gate agent run.

When to Run

After every analytical phase (NOT preprocessor or report generator):

• Phase 1A (Analyst) → premise + extraction quality
• Phase 1B (Gap Analyzer) → gap validity + severity calibration
• Phase 1C (Decision Advisor) → recommendation soundness + completeness
• Phase 2 (Critic) → criticism direction + gap/undecided integration
• Phase 3 (Strategist) → defense direction + cultural calibration

Retry Logic

Phase N → Schema check (script) → Quality Gate (opus)
  ├─ PASS → proceed to Phase N+1
  └─ REVISE → re-run Phase N with fix_direction from QA
                ├─ 2nd PASS → proceed
                └─ 2nd REVISE → proceed with warnings

Critical Rule

The quality gate MUST read the original preprocessed deliverable (00_preprocessed_input.md) alongside the phase output. This is how it verifies that claims about the deliverable are actually accurate — not just internally consistent but factually correct.