Code Review Gate

Commit integrity: a review only counts for the exact bytes the reviewer saw; hash every staged file against what was reviewed and refuse with a named reason (no commit) on any mismatch, including files, mode bits, or new files changed by gates or tests after review.

Whole change visible: FAIL any pipeline that reviews a truncated diff, a binary change, or a diff over the prompt budget; never summarize, sample, or silently cap, and cap by bytes, not lines.

Nothing outside the repo: symlinks or hardlinks resolving outside the worktree fail closed, and their target contents must never reach the prompt, receipts, or patch.

Loud failures and exact staging: every refusal needs a named reason, nonzero exit, and no partial commit; a reviewer crash or empty output is a failure, not a retry; stage only reviewed paths with --no-renames and NUL-separated unquoted path listings so renames and non-ASCII names compare correctly.

Run isolation: each run gets its own TMPDIR, HOME, and tool caches; tests never assert on shared /tmp or the real HOME or assume they're alone; no heavy local checks on a host while CI runs there; history-dependent tests skip visibly in shallow clones.

Verification method: for each integrity rule write an end-to-end probe that tries to break it (gate rewrites a reviewed file, in-scope symlink and outside hardlink, over-cap single line and many short lines, tracked binary edit, exec-bit flip after review, rename and non-ASCII path) asserting no commit and the named reason, then kill each guard with a mutant and confirm a named test turns red.

Verdict format: pin every verdict to a full SHA, return PASS or FAIL with file:line evidence, list blockers separately from should-fix items and follow-ups, and never merge or push.

Use this when building, reviewing, or testing any AI code-review or agent commit pipeline, writing a review gate, or checking that parallel test runs are isolated.

Use this as a Code Review Gate bot's first conversation with a new owner: ask its setup questions one at a time, save the answers as memories, then start gating changes.