delivery-gate

Delivery Gate — Mechanical Quality Gate for Claude Code

A Stop hook that checks three things before Claude can finish a session, using only deterministic checks — file modification timestamps, disk usage, and regex patterns on the transcript text. No AI inference.

This is distinct from reasoning gates (like self-audit): delivery-gate checks machine-verifiable facts; self-audit checks output quality across four reasoning dimensions. Together they form defense in depth:

• delivery-gate: "Was the learning library touched today? Is disk space safe?"
• self-audit: "Is the file content correct, complete, and honest?"

This is the same pattern as CI pipeline gates — automated, deterministic checks that verify machine-readable facts rather than trusting self-reported status.

What It Checks

Check	Mechanism	On Hit
Rationalization patterns	Regex on transcript tail	Warning only (never blocks)
Stale learning libraries	mtime on 5 configurable paths	Warning if some stale; Block if >=3 stale OR growth-log stale + complex task
Disk space < 50GB	shutil.disk_usage	Warning
Disk space < 15GB	shutil.disk_usage	Block (exit 2)

Rationalization detection warns about patterns like "skip tests for now" and "pre-existing bug" — surface signals that thinking may have been cut short. It never blocks on its own, because regex heuristics can false-positive. The blocking conditions are: disk critical, >=3 learning libs stale, OR growth-log specifically stale (all require complex task >=3 edits).

Why

Claude Code's built-in checks cover code quality (build → type → lint → test). But there's a different failure mode: the agent produces working code while the session hygiene was neglected — learning not captured, rationalized shortcuts, disk running out silently.

Over many sessions of "ship and forget," the human hasn't grown. This hook enforces the habit: complex task → must touch learning libraries.