The gate has to actually gate

# The gate has to actually gate The repository has one rule before merging: `bun run verify` must pass. It has been defeated twice, in two different ways, and neither involved the checks themselves being wrong. ## Once through a pipe ```bash bun run verify | grep -E "error|fail" ``` The exit code of a pipeline is the exit code of its **last** command. `grep` found nothing, exited 0, and the `&&` chain sailed on to the merge. A failing test had been sitting in the output the whole time. ## Once through a semicolon ```bash cat "$OUTPUT" ; git merge --no-ff branch && git push ``` Reading the result and acting on the result are not the same thing. `cat` succeeded, so the merge ran — against a branch whose verify had exited 1 in zero seconds because the formatter rejected a quote style. Both times the check worked perfectly. Both times nothing was listening. ## The shape that cannot fail this way Make the exit code the condition, in the same command: ```bash bun run verify > verify.log 2>&1 E=$? if [ $E -eq 0 ]; then git merge --no-ff -q branch && git push -q else echo "NOT MERGED"; tail -25 verify.log fi ``` ## The part that generalises A verification step you read with your eyes is not a gate; it is a report. The difference only shows up on the day the report says something you were not expecting, which is exactly the day you are moving quickly and skim it. If a check is meant to block, something other than your attention has to be doing the blocking.