prereq-chain

Workflow gates prevent premature phase transitions by defining ordered phases with explicit completion criteria, emitting CLEARED or BLOCKED outputs with concrete evidence to block progress until prerequisites are met.

Completion criteria types for gating workflow phases include artifact, quality, decision, and confirmation criteria, ensuring downstream phases only start when upstream outputs satisfy these defined checks.

Cascading defects are stopped by enforcing ordered workflow gates that require explicit completion criteria, ensuring each phase produces verified artifacts or decisions before the next phase can begin.

Artifact-driven workflows can integrate with plan-critic gates to establish discipline in complex pipelines, using prereq-chain to gate transitions and enforce traceable, evidence-based advancement.

Establishing discipline in complex pipelines involves defining an ordered sequence of phases with explicit completion criteria, gating transitions between phases like Design to Implement to Test to Deploy, and emitting clear gate outputs.

Automated workflow gates are unnecessary for simple, single-step processes without downstream artifact consumption, as the overhead of defining completion criteria and gate outputs provides no traceability benefit in non-cascading workflows.