pre-merge

The quality gate. Runs after eng --build says a feature branch is done: it checks quality, fixes the bugs it finds, and writes its report. It stays local — it never pushes and never opens a PR; /merge does both. Pre-merge holds no human gate — the human look at the running feature belongs to merge (../shared/refs/safety-floor.md § Human gates). Absorbs the retired /review and /test. Each run is independent. Posture: release engineer — owns the gate; repeatable evidence over assertion, severity matched to reachability, tables over prose, JSON-first.

eng --build  →  /pre-merge  →  (fail → automatic fix: eng --plan + eng --build, gate again, ≤2 rounds)  →  pass → "Next: /merge"

Usage

• /pre-merge — gate the current feature branch against the base (staging, else main). First run: no components[] in devkit/policy.json ⇒ setup runs inline (detect tooling → batched questions, gaps only → gated install/scaffold → save devkit/policy.json), then the gate continues in the same run (refs/protocol-init.md). The PRD is found from the branch name (feat/prd-<N>-<slug>); no match or several matches ⇒ one question, with a "No PRD" choice (refs/executor.md §0b). When test selection is on, critical-test tagging runs automatically before selection (refs/protocol-criticality.md)
• /pre-merge --update — redo or refresh setup: re-run preflight → diff components[] → approve the delta → apply present/active_when/new-component changes only, never re-grading user-set criticality or re-prompting settled opt-outs (refs/protocol-init.md). The .github/workflows/ CI pipeline is part of the detect unless policies.github_actions.enabled is false — a settled opt-out, not a gap
• /pre-merge --prior-issues <path> / --full-secret-scan — load a prior verdict JSON to mark regressions / make the security component scan the full tree (default: diff-only)
• /pre-merge --flaky <N> / --changed-only — retry failing e2e / unit-int tests up to N times; skip platform components whose surface the diff doesn't touch (refs/_common.md). --minified / --full — force test selection on for this run (a trial; nothing written) / force the full suites, the kill switch. Flag beats policy: --full > --minified > policies.test_selection (refs/executor.md §3c)

Progress messages are always on, every 5 minutes (../shared/refs/status-heartbeat.md).

Natural language: "run pre-merge", "gate this before merge", "check this branch", "run the CI gate".

Hard refusals

Shapes and JSON in refs/refusal-patterns.md. Pre-merge:

• Does NOT run on built-in defaults. No components[] in devkit/policy.json ⇒ setup runs first, saves the manifest, then the gate runs (refs/executor.md §0).
• Does NOT modify source code itself. Its only direct writes are the first-run setup commit (refs/protocol-init.md step 7), the SYNC (D7)-bounded sync-merge commit and, when test selection is on, the critical-test tag commit (refs/protocol-criticality.md); regression tests and fixes are written by eng, never by pre-merge.
• Does NOT git push, open a PR, gh pr merge, git merge into main, or deploy. The branch stays local; /merge pushes it and opens the PR.
• Does NOT run without a non-empty diff against base (no_diff). A missing staging branch is NOT a blocker — the base falls back to main, no warning, no refusal.
• Does NOT grade a finding as blocker without quoted tool evidence. Does NOT compute a verdict by hand — script-aggregate-verdict.sh does (refs/executor.md §5b). Does NOT mutate components[] in a gate run — only setup and --update do. The manifest staleness nudge (refs/executor.md §0) is read-only.

Inputs / Outputs

Dispatch

The gate run executes in a subagent. The main thread is a thin dispatcher: first-run setup and the PRD question inline (both may ask the user), the cheap no_diff probe, then one backgrounded subagent runs the whole pipeline, watched under gate-<epoch>, result relayed byte-identically (../shared/refs/gate-dispatch.md). The dispatcher runs no check and writes no artifact. Every question stays in the main thread:

• Merge conflict — the subagent aborts the merge and stops with sync_conflict; the main thread asks "Resolve now / Abort", and on Resolve runs /pre-merge again (refs/sync.md).
• Fail — the main thread runs the automatic fix loop: eng --plan report=… → eng --build report=… → gate again, no question, up to 2 rounds; it stops early on no progress, a safety pause, a merge conflict, or a bug at eng's 3-attempt limit, and the hand-off says why and the next command (../shared/refs/fix-loop.md).

The gate is a preflight-driven executor — it runs the resolved components[] pipeline from devkit/policy.json, not a fixed step list. Policy load/validate once per run (../shared/refs/policy-schema.md §0/§1 + policy-schema-pre-merge.md §2c — merge's half never loaded); the manifest carries deltas only, joined with the catalog by script-pipeline-resolve.py, whose plan the executor quotes verbatim. SYNC always first, the terminal always last — "Next: /merge" on a pass, the fix loop on a fail; the gate never dead-ends.

Every run ends with the emission order of refs/executor.md §7 — run report, terminal Issue summary, verdict JSON (the final machine emission), closing message last; on a pass its last line is "Next: /merge". Harness incidents: log per ../shared/refs/doctor-logging.md — a check that legitimately fails is not an incident.

References

• refs/executor.md — the pipeline executor (C1/C5/C6/C7): §0 first-run setup + staleness nudge, §0a base, §0b PRD, §3b the C23 test sandbox, §3c test selection + §3c.4 critical tagging, §5b emissions, §6 last check, §7 terminals
• refs/sync.md · refs/protocol-init.md · refs/protocol-criticality.md · refs/platform-profiles.md · refs/_common.md · refs/universal/protocol-{mechanical,tests,coverage,regression,security}.md · refs/platform/protocol-{migration,smoke}.md · refs/prd/protocol-prd-consistency.md (blocks on unmet criteria only — every other grade routes to the human test checklist at merge --staging)
• refs/output-schema.md · refs/finding-schema.md · refs/severity-rubric.md · refs/refusal-patterns.md
• ../shared/refs/ — policy-schema.md (§0/§1/§2b) · policy-schema-pre-merge.md (components[], source_signature, §2c test_selection, criticality_review) · component-catalog.md · check-report-schema.md · env-contract.md (read at §3b, never written) · gate-dispatch.md · fix-loop.md · closing-message.md · doctor-logging.md · safety-floor.md · finding-schema.md · report-schema.md · verify-prelude.md · status-heartbeat.md
• .claude/scripts/script-preflight-*.sh (C4, the detector) · script-pipeline-resolve.py (join → prune → C12 → waves → plan JSON; --check-complete) · script-aggregate-verdict.sh · script-premerge-last-check.sh · scripts/script-resolve-diff.sh