v0.6.0 — AI release decision engine

PROMOTE, HOLD, or BLOCK
— with a score to prove it.

release-gate runs evals, validates agent traces, checks cost budgets, and generates an evidence pack — then gives you one number (0–100) and one decision.

See how it works View on GitHub

✓ Fully governed — PROMOTE

governance-safe-pass.yaml

$ release-gate score governance.yaml Readiness Score 94 / 100 Confidence high safety 100 access_control 100 cost 90 fallback 100 eval_quality 85 observability 80 Critical failures none Decision: ✓ PROMOTE (score 94/100)

✗ Missing safeguards — BLOCK

governance-unsafe-fail.yaml

$ release-gate score governance.yaml Readiness Score 41 / 100 Confidence low safety 20 access_control 30 cost 40 fallback 0 Critical failures: FALLBACK_DECLARED — kill switch missing ACTION_BUDGET — no budget cap set Decision: ✗ BLOCK (score 41/100)

How it works

Four steps to a defensible release decision

release-gate slots into your CI/CD pipeline. No backend, no dashboard, no sign-up.

Write a governance.yaml next to your code

Declare your model, expected usage, daily budget cap, kill switch, eval cases, and trace policies. Takes about 5 minutes — or use release-gate init for an interactive wizard.

governance.yaml

agent: model: gpt-4-turbo daily_requests: 5000 checks: action_budget: {max_daily_cost: 500} fallback_declared: kill_switch: {type: feature-flag} team_owner: platform-team trace_policies: forbidden_tools: [delete_database, export_data] max_tool_calls: 10 max_retries: 2

Score every deploy candidate

One command evaluates safety, cost, access control, fallback, eval quality, and observability. You get a 0–100 readiness score and a PROMOTE / HOLD / BLOCK decision — not just pass/fail YAML warnings.

$ release-gate score governance.yaml --evals evals.yaml Readiness Score 94 / 100 confidence: high Dimension Breakdown: safety 100 (weight 30%) cost 90 (weight 20%) access_control 100 (weight 20%) fallback 100 (weight 15%) eval_quality 85 (weight 10%) observability 80 (weight 5%) Decision: ✓ PROMOTE (score 94/100)

Catch regressions before they ship

Compare a baseline report against the candidate. Any dimension that drops more than 10 points — especially safety, fallback, or access control — is flagged as a regression and blocks the release automatically.

$ release-gate compare baseline.json candidate.json Baseline score 94/100 (PROMOTE) Candidate score 71/100 (HOLD) Score delta −23 points Regressions detected: safety 100 → 60 (-40 pts) CRITICAL fallback 100 → 75 (-25 pts) Decision: ✗ BLOCK — critical regression in safety

Generate an evidence pack for every release

One command produces three audit artefacts — a machine-readable JSON report, an executive Markdown summary, and a full HTML dashboard — ready for compliance, security review, or stakeholder sign-off.

$ release-gate evidence-pack governance.yaml ✓ release-evidence/readiness_report.json ✓ release-evidence/executive_summary.md ✓ release-evidence/release-gate-evidence.html Upload as CI artifact or attach to release PR.

Live demo

Real commands. Real output.

Four scenarios showing score, regression detection, trace violation, and the impact simulator.

$ release-gate score examples/governance-safe-pass.yaml \ --evals examples/evals.yaml \ --traces examples/traces/safe-trace.json release-gate | Readiness Scorer v0.6.0 Project customer-support-agent v1.0.0 Checks run 5 (5 pass, 0 warn, 0 fail) Evals run 7 (7 pass, 0 fail) pass rate 100% Traces checked 1 (0 violations) Score 94 / 100 confidence: high Dimension Breakdown: safety 100 ██████████ (wt 30%) cost 90 █████████░ (wt 20%) access_control 100 ██████████ (wt 20%) fallback 100 ██████████ (wt 15%) eval_quality 85 ████████░░ (wt 10%) observability 80 ████████░░ (wt 5%) Critical failures none Decision: ✓ PROMOTE (score 94/100) exit 0

Try it yourself: pip install release-gate then release-gate score examples/governance-safe-pass.yaml

What’s new in v0.6

From governance linter to release decision engine

Five new capabilities turn static YAML checks into a real AI deployment gate.

New v0.6

📊

Readiness Scorer — 0–100

Six weighted dimensions (safety 30%, cost 20%, access control 20%, fallback 15%, eval quality 10%, observability 5%) collapse into one number and one decision: PROMOTE, HOLD, or BLOCK.

New v0.6

🔍

Regression Gate

Compare any two readiness report snapshots. Drops >10 points in any dimension — especially safety, fallback, or access control — automatically BLOCK the release. Ship with a diff, not a guess.

New v0.6

🧪

Eval Runner

Declare behavior test cases in YAML: refuse_or_mask, contains_keywords, valid_json, no_tool_calls. Runs in static mode (CI-safe, no LLM key needed) or live mode with any agent callable.

New v0.6

🛡️

Trace Validator

Feed your agent’s execution trace (JSON or JSONL). Detects forbidden tool calls, allowed-list violations, retry storms, token budget overruns, and tool-call loops before they reach production.

New v0.6

📄

Evidence Pack

One command generates three audit artefacts: readiness_report.json, executive_summary.md, and release-gate-evidence.html. Attach to PRs, compliance tickets, or security reviews.

v0.5

💸

Impact Simulator

Normal vs. runaway cost side-by-side. Engineering leaders see the dollars at risk, not YAML warnings. The HTML report uploads as a CI artifact automatically.

v0.5

🔒

Cryptographic Sign & Verify

Sign governance.yaml with RSA-PSS + SHA-256. Verify in CI that no one changed budget limits or policies after review.

v0.5

⚙️

GitHub Actions Native

5 lines in your workflow. Exit code 0 = PROMOTE, 10 = HOLD, 1 = BLOCK. The HTML report is auto-uploaded as a CI artifact — your team reviews it without leaving GitHub.

CI/CD Integration

Gate every push automatically

Works with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, and any shell. All commands return structured exit codes.

# .github/workflows/governance.yml name: AI Release Gate on: [push, pull_request] jobs: release-gate: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - name: Score & gate release uses: VamsiSudhakaran1/release-gate@v0.6.0 with: command: score config: governance.yaml evals: evals.yaml html-report: evidence.html # evidence pack auto-uploaded as CI artifact

release-gate score

0–100 score + PROMOTE/HOLD/BLOCK

release-gate compare

Regression detection vs baseline

release-gate evidence-pack

JSON + Markdown + HTML artefacts

release-gate impact

Cost simulation (v0.5)

🟢

Exit codes your pipeline understands

0 = PROMOTE / PASS — deploy it.
10 = HOLD / WARN — review before deploying.
1 = BLOCK / FAIL — do not deploy.

📋

Evidence pack as CI artifact

Every PR gets a readiness report, executive summary, and HTML dashboard — attached automatically so reviewers see the full picture without running anything locally.

🔄

Regression baseline in git

Commit readiness_report.json as your baseline. Run release-gate compare on every PR to catch silent degradations in safety or fallback coverage.

Governance checks

5 checks + evals + traces. One decision.

Each check maps to a real failure mode — cost explosion, no kill switch, open access, bad inputs, forbidden tool use.

Check / Layer	What it validates	Blocked when
ACTION_BUDGET	Estimated daily cost vs. declared budget cap	Cost exceeds `max_daily_cost` or no budget set
BUDGET_SIMULATION	Projected cost with retries, caching & spike multipliers across 10+ models	Projected cost exceeds budget or multipliers are out of range
FALLBACK_DECLARED	Kill switch, fallback mode, team owner, runbook URL	Any field missing — no owner means no one gets paged at 3 AM
IDENTITY_BOUNDARY	Auth required, rate limit configured, data isolation rules	Auth is optional or rate limit absent — anyone can exhaust budget
INPUT_CONTRACT	JSON Schema defined, valid & invalid sample payloads provided	Schema missing (FAIL) or no valid samples (WARN)
Evals (behavior)	refuse_or_mask, contains_keywords, valid_json, no_tool_calls — declared in YAML	Critical evals fail (safety category)
Trace Validator	Forbidden tools, allowed-list violations, retry storms, token budget, tool loops	Any forbidden tool called or retry storm detected

Get started in 60 seconds

pip install release-gate && release-gate init

View on GitHub →

PROMOTE, HOLD, or BLOCK— with a score to prove it.

Four steps to a defensible release decision

Write a governance.yaml next to your code

Score every deploy candidate

Catch regressions before they ship

Generate an evidence pack for every release

Real commands. Real output.

From governance linter to release decision engine

Readiness Scorer — 0–100

Regression Gate

Eval Runner

Trace Validator

Evidence Pack

Impact Simulator

Cryptographic Sign & Verify

GitHub Actions Native

Gate every push automatically

Exit codes your pipeline understands

Evidence pack as CI artifact

Regression baseline in git

5 checks + evals + traces. One decision.

PROMOTE, HOLD, or BLOCK
— with a score to prove it.