skills/execute-premium-projects/references/quality-gates.md

# Quality Gates

Select only gates relevant to the work. A gate passes only with observable evidence or a clearly disclosed professional judgment.

## Universal gates

- **Correctness:** Does the result meet explicit requirements and acceptance criteria?
- **User value:** Does it solve the intended problem for the intended user?
- **Coherence:** Do parts support one another without contradictions?
- **Precision:** Are claims, instructions, interfaces, and outputs specific enough to use?
- **Sustainability:** Is the result maintainable and appropriate for its expected lifetime?
- **Risk:** Are material failure modes controlled, detectable, and recoverable?
- **Scope:** Was the requested outcome completed without unrelated expansion?

## Strategy and business

- evidence versus assumptions;
- customer and problem fit;
- differentiation and alternatives;
- economics and resource realism;
- operational feasibility;
- legal or regulatory review boundary;
- kill, pivot, and scale criteria;
- long-term strategic fit.

## Software and technical systems

- functional and integration tests;
- architecture and dependency direction;
- security, privacy, and secrets;
- data integrity, migrations, and rollback;
- performance and scalability proportional to need;
- failure handling, observability, and recovery;
- accessibility and compatibility where relevant;
- maintainability and documentation;
- regression against existing behavior.

## Product and UX

- target user and job clarity;
- information architecture and task flow;
- friction, feedback, states, and error recovery;
- accessibility and mobile behavior;
- trust, proof, and conversion integrity;
- consistency with the broader product;
- evidence that the feature is necessary.

## Design and creative work

- concept strength and distinctiveness;
- audience, brand, and context fit;
- hierarchy, composition, consistency, and craft;
- usability and accessibility;
- production feasibility and asset rights;
- emotional effect without gratuitous spectacle;
- continuity across formats and states.

## Research and analysis

- source quality and freshness;
- claim-to-source traceability;
- method fit and reproducibility;
- uncertainty and limitations;
- alternative explanations;
- false precision, selection bias, and unsupported causality;
- distinction between fact, inference, and recommendation.

## Planning and operations

- clear owners and decision rights;
- dependencies and critical path;
- realistic capacity and sequencing;
- measurable completion and quality criteria;
- approval and escalation gates;
- contingency and rollback;
- handoff completeness.

## Regression record

For material changes, record:

| Area | Before | Intended change | Verification | Result | Residual risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|

Do not claim “no regression” when only a subset was tested. State the tested scope.