Gate criteria

Criteria are what make a phase a gate. Without them, a phase is a folder.

Adding criteria#

Open a phase and add criteria in its gate section. A criterion is a short, checkable statement — the thing you would actually stop the project for.

Good criteria are specific and falsifiable:

• ✅ "Line trial completed at the Rotterdam plant with yield above 92%"
• ✅ "Packaging artwork signed off by Legal"
• ❌ "Packaging is in good shape"

Criteria are ordered, and you can add or edit them at any point in the phase's life. Criteria copied from a template all start as incomplete.

The three states#

Incompleteblocking

The default. Not met, and the phase cannot complete while any criterion is in this state.

Passednon-blocking

Met. Record who approved it and what the evidence was.

Conditionally passednon-blocking

Met with a caveat you have consciously accepted — the data is provisional, the sign-off is verbal, the supplier confirmed by email but the contract is unsigned.

It does not block the phase, but the phase is flagged as having conditional passes, so the caveat travels with the project rather than evaporating at the gate.

The middle state is the point. Real gates are rarely binary, and a tool that forces a yes/no answer just teaches people to click yes.

Approver and evidence#

Each criterion can record:

• Approver — the team member who signed it off. Use the person who actually has the authority, not whoever happened to click.
• Evidence — a line of text saying why it passed. A test report reference, a meeting date, a document name.

Evidence is optional, and it is the single highest-value habit in the whole product. Six months later, "Passed" tells you nothing and "Passed — batch 4 stability data, 12-week point, report QA-2291" tells you everything.

Completing a phase#

The Complete phase button sits at the top of the phase and shows its criteria count, for example Complete phase (4/5 criteria).

• While any criterion is incomplete, the button is disabled and names what is blocking it.
• When every criterion is passed or conditionally passed, the button becomes available. If any are conditional, it is marked to make that visible before you click.

Completing a phase sets it to completed, stamps the completion time, and starts the next phase in order.

Criteria and gate readiness#

Outstanding criteria are the single largest input to a phase's gate readiness signal, so a phase carrying four unmet criteria a week before its deadline turns amber long before anyone books the gate meeting. Recording a pass the day it happens, rather than the day before the gate, is what keeps that signal honest.

Criteria and the portfolio#

Criterion states roll up. A tag's portfolio dashboard shows where every project sits against its gates, which is how you spot the project that has been "one criterion away" for five weeks.

Doing it over the API#

Criteria are fully addressable from the MCP server — list, create, update, delete, and complete_phase, which applies exactly the same blocking rule as the button and returns how many conditional passes were involved.