Ship-Gate — Deterministic Quality Gate

The 2026 consensus on AI-written code is "did it pass the gates," not "did a senior read every line." This skill promotes the /ship scorecard from advisory to a blocking, deterministic gate: same scoring as /ship (shared tools/lib/ship-scoring.mjs), compared against thresholds in .ultraship/ship-gate.json, exiting non-zero so it can fail a push or a CI job.

When to use

The user wants a merge gate, a CI quality check, a pre-push guard, or to enforce a minimum ship-readiness score before code goes out.

Process

Phase 1: Initialize the config

node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/tools/ship-gate.mjs init <project-directory>

Writes .ultraship/ship-gate.json:

{
  "thresholds": { "overall": 80, "seo": 70, "a11y": 80, "security": 90, "quality": 70, "bundle": 70 },
  "hardFail": { "onLeakedSecrets": true, "onCriticalFindings": true },
  "skipMissing": true
}

• thresholds — minimum score (0–100) per category and overall. Below it = fail.
• hardFail.onLeakedSecrets — any secret finding fails the gate regardless of score.
• hardFail.onCriticalFindings — any critical-severity finding (any audit) fails the gate.
• skipMissing — categories that didn't run (e.g. no HTML → SEO/a11y skipped) are ignored rather than failing. Set false to require every category.

Tune thresholds to the project. Sensible starting points: backend API → drop seo/a11y/bundle or rely on skipMissing; marketing site → raise seo/a11y; pre-revenue MVP → lower overall to 70.

Phase 2: Run the gate

node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/tools/ship-gate.mjs run <project-directory>
# or, installed: npx ultraship ship-gate .
# machine-readable: ... run <dir> --json

It runs all six auditors (seo, a11y, secrets, code-profiler, deps, bundle), scores them, and prints a PASS/FAIL table with a merge-confidence number (the overall score). Exit 0 = pass, exit 1 = fail.

Phase 3: Explain and fix failures

When the gate fails, report exactly which checks were below the bar, then fix:

• Score below a category threshold → run that category's fixer: /a11y, /secure, /seo, /profile apply fixes.
• Leaked secret → remove it, rotate the key, move it to an env var (/secure).
• Critical finding → resolve it before anything else.

Re-run the gate to confirm it now passes. Never lower a threshold just to pass — fix the issue, or change the threshold only with the user's explicit agreement and a reason.

Phase 4: Enforce it (CI + pre-push)

Wire the gate in so it runs automatically:

# GitHub Actions workflow at .github/workflows/ship-gate.yml
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/tools/ship-gate.mjs ci <project-directory>

# Local git pre-push hook (.git/hooks/pre-push) — blocks a push that fails the gate
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/tools/ship-gate.mjs hook <project-directory>

Tell the user how to bypass the local hook in an emergency: git push --no-verify. The CI gate has no bypass by design.

Key Principles

• One source of truth. The gate and /ship share the same scoring module — the gate can never disagree with the scorecard.
• Deterministic. Same input → same verdict. Auditable for SOC2/ISO/HIPAA, unlike an LLM-only "looks fine."
• Fix, don't dodge. Failing the gate means fixing the code, not weakening the threshold.
• Never block on a missing tool. A tool that can't run leaves its category skipped (or fails only if skipMissing:false), never crashes the gate.