fable-delivery-gate — check the deliverable against its definition of done before handing it over

This skill mirrors fablever's fable_check gate. In a controlled sim (eval/comparison/fable-check-sim/) a definition-of-done gate beat the raw first draft 27–0 and closed the named acceptance gap (80.6% vs 12.9%). Honest bound, published in the same file: against a generic "make it better" second pass the gate showed no edge (16–9, n.s.). So the value is specifically checking against stated acceptance criteria, not a general polish step.

If the fable-profile MCP is connected (Codex /mcp), prefer calling the real fable_check tool. This skill is the procedure to follow with or without it.

When to use this

• You are about to present a final external-facing artifact: a report, research summary, doc, marketing or funnel copy, an email to send, a code-change summary a reviewer will trust.
• The user says "ship/send/finalize it" or asks "is this ready?"

When NOT to use this

• Mid-draft exploration, or an internal scratch artifact no one will act on yet.
• A trivial one-line answer where a formal gate is ceremony.

Procedure

1. State the definition of done. List the acceptance criteria the artifact must meet — from the user's request, the audience, and the medium. If the user never stated them, infer the obvious ones and show them.
2. Check each criterion against the artifact, concretely. For each: does the artifact actually satisfy it? Point to the part that does. Unmet or unverifiable → it fails that criterion.
3. Catch the common misses: unstated assumptions presented as fact, claims with no support, missing sections the audience needs, scope the user asked for but the draft dropped, broken/placeholder links, numbers that were never checked.
4. Verdict. PASS only if every criterion is met. Otherwise BLOCK with the specific failed criteria.
5. On BLOCK, fix and re-run the gate — do not hand over a BLOCKed artifact. Do not auto-send.

Expected output

A short PASS/BLOCK verdict with the criteria list. On BLOCK: the exact unmet criteria and what to fix — then the revised artifact, re-checked.

Verification

The gate is only meaningful if a criterion could actually fail it. If every criterion is "yes" on first read with nothing pointed to, you wrote the criteria too loosely — tighten them to the audience's real needs and re-check.

Failure cases

• Passing on tone/length while a required section or a load-bearing claim is missing.
• Treating "I reviewed it and it looks good" as a gate — that is not a check against criteria.
• Auto-sending a BLOCKed deliverable because the user said "ship it".