thumbgate

ThumbGate

AI coding agents repeat mistakes — and one wrong tool call can wipe a directory, leak a key, or push broken code.

ThumbGate is the local-first firewall for AI coding agents. It runs in the PreToolUse hook on your machine and blocks dangerous tool calls — rm -rf, secret exfiltration, off-scope edits, a bad git push — before they execute, across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, Amp, Cline, and OpenCode. No server, no gateway. (Regulated-industry policy templates — legal intake, financial compliance, healthcare — build on the same engine.)

The product is a self-improving enforcement layer: thumbs-down feedback, prompt evaluation, and proof from prior runs become prevention rules that permanently stop repeated failures before the next tool call.

  Agent tries:   rm -rf tests/
  ThumbGate:     ⛔ BLOCKED — "Never delete test directories"
                 Pattern matched: rm.*-rf.*tests
                 Source: your thumbs-down from last Tuesday
                 Tokens spent on this repeat: 0

npx thumbgate init   # auto-detects your agent, wires hooks, 30 seconds

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Amp, Cline, OpenCode and any MCP-compatible agent. Free tier: 2 feedback captures/day (10 total) and up to 3 active auto-promoted prevention rules. Pro: $19/mo or $149/yr — unlimited rules, history-aware lessons, feedback sessions, dashboard, DPO export. Enterprise (custom pricing, scoped after intake) adds a shared hosted lesson DB, org dashboard, and shared org-wide enforcement.

"A better dashboard doesn't make the agents more reliable. The hard part isn't visibility. It's trust."

— Rob May, CEO & co-founder, Neurometric AI, quoted in The New Stack on Anthropic's Claude Code Agent View (May 2026).

ThumbGate is the open-source layer that makes the trust part real: PreToolUse gates, thumbs-down to rule, audit trail on every interception.

Agentic development cycle fit

Agentic development is becoming a loop: Guide → Generate → Verify → Solve. ThumbGate gives that loop a hard execution boundary.

• Guide: standards, prior thumbs-downs, and approval policies become concrete context.
• Generate: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, Amp, Cline, OpenCode, and MCP agents keep producing plans and tool calls.
• Verify: risky actions need evidence before execution, not just after PR review.
• Solve: blocked failures become reusable lessons, shared prevention rules, DPO exports, and audit events.

In that stack, ThumbGate is the pre-action gate between generated intent and executed action.

Discoverable slash-commands — the guardrail layer for spec-driven agents

Spec-driven agent frameworks like GSD (get-shit-done) and GitHub Spec Kit are great at planning and generating work — they expose dozens of discoverable /gsd-* / /specify commands in the agent command palette. ThumbGate is the guardrail layer for spec-driven agents: it sits after the plan, on the boundary between a generated tool call and its execution. It works alongside GSD / Spec-Kit, not instead of them — they decide what to build; ThumbGate enforces what the agent must never do while building it.

npx thumbgate init installs these commands into your agent's palette (.claude/commands/, .gemini/commands/, .antigravitycli/commands/) so the enforcement layer is as browsable as the planning layer: