# Safety and Gates

## Navigation

- [Home](Home.md) | [Operator Guide](Operator-Guide.md) | [Repositories Map](Repositories.md) | [Identity and Profiles](Identity-and-Profiles.md) | [Workflow Model](Workflow.md) | [Safety and Gates](Safety-and-Gates.md) | [MCP Tools Reference](MCP-Tools.md) | [Operator Runbooks](Runbooks.md) | [Open Decisions](Open-Decisions.md) | [Project History](History.md)

*Prompts express intent; MCP tools enforce safety.*

## Primary gates

1. **Fail closed** — Unknown tasks, missing capability resolution, or profile mismatches block mutations.
2. **Task capability map** — `gitea_resolve_task_capability` must precede gated issue/PR mutations.
3. **Issue lock** — `gitea_lock_issue` required before author implementation on a tracked issue.
4. **Head SHA pinning** — Reviews and merges refuse when the PR head moved.
5. **Explicit merge confirmation** — `gitea_merge_pr` requires `confirmation="MERGE PR <n>"`.
6. **No self-review / self-merge** — Authenticated user must differ from PR author for approve/merge.
7. **Review decision lock** — Live review mutations require validation-phase dry-run and `gitea_mark_final_review_decision`.
8. **Terminal review hard-stop (#332)** — After a terminal live review mutation, only same-PR merge after `approve` may continue. Durable locks (#559) must not be deleted by hand.
9. **Stale decision-lock cleanup (#594)** — `gitea_cleanup_stale_review_decision_lock` may clear a durable #332 lock **only** when the last terminal mutation's PR is live-state **merged or closed**, identity/profile gates pass, and apply uses a reviewer-capable profile. Open/ambiguous locks stay fail-closed. Successful cleanup records a durable audit trail.
10. **Redaction** — Tokens, passwords, and keychain material never appear in tool output.
11. **Wiki publication (#224)** — `docs/wiki/` and the sync helper are prerequisites only. Closing a wiki issue requires live Gitea Wiki proof on the repo Wiki tab. See [Runbooks](Runbooks.md#wiki-publication-readiness-gate-224).