The merge gate for AI-written CODE: returns a binary approve/reject verdict with veto power — e.g. it rejects code calling the nonexistent stripe.Inventory API, or an N+1 loop with the latency arithmetic to prove it. Deterministic reality gates (mock/placeholder veto, gaming and bypass detection, invented-API checks) run first and cannot be overridden; a frontier-model review (ISO/IEC 25010) then scores performance, scalability, reliability and tech debt. Read-only: the code is analyzed, never executed. Call it on every AI-generated diff before accepting it; use validate_plan for plans, analyze_code for an advisory report without a verdict.

The gate for PLANS, designs and specs — run BEFORE any code is written, the cheapest place to catch a bad design. Returns the same binary verdict shape as validate_ai_output, with findings on completeness, feasibility, performance and scalability implications, security risks and missing considerations (e.g. it rejects a plan that polls an API every 100ms per client, with the request-volume math). Read-only: nothing is executed or stored beyond the verdict. Use validate_ai_output for the code that follows.

Advisory deep-dive on existing code — scores and findings, deliberately NO pass/fail verdict, so it never blocks an agent. Surfaces performance hot paths, scalability cliffs, reliability gaps and tech debt with concrete latency/throughput arithmetic (e.g. 'O(n²) dedup: ~4s at 10k items'). Read-only: the code is analyzed, never executed. Use it to understand a validate_ai_output rejection or review inherited code; use validate_ai_output when you need an accept/reject decision.

Generate code and gate it in one step: an LLM writes the implementation, then the same protection engine as validate_ai_output vets it — retrying generation when the gate rejects. If every attempt is vetoed you still receive the last attempt, clearly marked validated:false with the gate findings — rejected code is never presented as clean. Generation runs on our infrastructure; nothing executes in your environment.