Quality Gate

Gates convert quality from an aspiration into a checkpoint. Useful ones are specific and automatable — the answer cites at least one source, no restricted category appears, the format matches what the receiving system accepts, the response falls within an expected length. Gates that require human judgement on every output are not gates but queues, and they fail under volume. The design question is what happens on failure: regeneration, escalation or refusal, each appropriate to different content.

Gates in Centralpoint sit in the governance and behavioural tiers, loading before the request is processed, and failures can route through Data Triggers as workflow events with named owners rather than as silently discarded outputs. Because the gate and its outcome are both recorded, the proportion of outputs failing a given gate is reportable rather than anecdotal.