Validation and gates

Execute quality policies, inspect dependencies, and distinguish local checks from delivery validation.

A gate is a Project Policy check. It may run tests, coverage, lint, or another configured command. Project Policy controls quality checks, while mandatory protocol integrity and safety invariants remain in force.

#Inspect before execution

bash

polis plan --repo . --policy /outside/policy.json

plan does not execute gates. It lists execution order, commands, dependencies, enabled gates, and the guarantees or limits of the effective policy.

#Run local validation

bash

polis gates --repo . --policy /outside/policy.json

To run selected checks or only those affected by Git changes:

bash

polis gates --repo . --policy /outside/policy.json --gate lint --gate coverage
polis gates --repo . --policy /outside/policy.json --affected

Required dependencies are added automatically. --jobs accepts 1 through 16; gates overlap only when explicitly marked parallel_safe. Coverage remains exclusive.

gates is not a sandbox. It runs configured commands in the actual repository, potentially creating caches or external effects according to project command behavior.

#Reuse and replay

A run can produce a result manifest. POLIS lets you inspect it, conditionally reuse passing results, or replay the selection through fresh execution.

bash

polis gates --repo . --environment-id toolchain-v1 \
  --policy /outside/policy.json --out-run /outside/first.json

polis gates --inspect-run /outside/first.json

polis gates --repo . --environment-id toolchain-v1 \
  --policy /outside/policy.json --reuse /outside/first.json

The environment identifier is operator asserted: it does not establish a hermetic environment or verify that external conditions really match. Reuse is disabled without an identifier. Previous results do not prove a modified repository state.

By default, reuse requires global source, Git/index, policy, dependency, and environment identities to match. Command gates with exhaustive input_paths and input_paths_complete: true can opt into input-scoped reuse, including ignored files, empty directories, and directory topology. That declaration cannot prove the command does not read other inputs; coverage remains globally bound. Omitted or reused gates do not replace full build or apply validation.

To rerun a previous selection, use polis gates --repo . --policy /outside/policy.json --replay /outside/first.json --environment-id toolchain-v1 with the original policy. Do not combine replay with --affected, --gate, --jobs, or --reuse.

#Follow command progress

With --format json, executing commands and gates emit started and completed JSON Lines on stderr while the ordinary JSON result remains on stdout. Lifecycle events report the action, reason, scope, ID, result, and completion duration. Reused or skipped gates do not emit execution events; inspect final outcomes instead. On JSON failures, the structured error is the final non-progress stderr record.

#PASS, FAIL, BLOCKED, and DEFERRED

Status	Meaning
`PASS`	The applicable check completed successfully.
`FAIL`	An executed check found a problem.
`BLOCKED`	A prerequisite prevented intended execution.
`DEFERRED`	The producer deferred an enabled gate; the consumer still must execute it for supported formats.

#Strict, standard, and minimal

strict is the default. standard keeps test.complete and disables generated coverage by default. minimal disables generated project-quality gates by default. None of these settings relaxes mandatory structure, integrity, scope, or application guarantees.

See Project Policy for gate configuration and Artifacts and verification for how validation becomes part of delivery.