review-to-release-workflow

Human-in-the-loop approval gates are enforced by structuring the workflow into four phases: discovery, implementation, verification, and release readiness. The agent stops at each gate, producing artifacts like QUESTIONS.md and VERIFICATION.md, until explicit human decisions are provided.

A go no-go release readiness assessment evaluates build, configuration, tests, deployment assumptions, and operational docs to produce a final verdict of Ready, Ready with caveats, or Not ready. It ensures risky changes are blocked before reaching production based on verified evidence.

Capture ambiguities by running a discovery phase that audits the codebase like a staff engineer, identifying risks and unclear decisions. This process generates a QUESTIONS.md decision backlog that must be answered before any implementation plan is created.

Verify scope boundaries during the verification phase by checking that approved decisions were implemented correctly. The agent produces a VERIFICATION.md artifact containing evidence that the changes match the approved plan without scope creep.

This workflow applies to full-codebase change requests where ambiguities, risk, or release impact require human-in-the-loop gates. Small, low-risk updates with clear scope may not need the four-phase process and explicit go/no-go decision artifacts.

Structure a safe production release workflow by enforcing phase ordering with stop conditions based on answered decisions and verification outcomes. Require the agent to produce and consume QUESTIONS.md, IMPLEMENTATION_NOTES.md, VERIFICATION.md, and RELEASE_READINESS.md across four distinct phases.