thumbgate-rules

ThumbGate Rules

Show the guardrails currently in force for this project: the auto-promoted prevention rules, the reliability rules, and the lessons they came from — so the user sees not just what is blocked but why.

This skill wraps existing ThumbGate capability and adds no new logic — it reads the live rule and lesson stores.

Workflow

1. List active rules with the prevention_rules MCP tool (CLI fallback: npx thumbgate rules).
2. Pull reliability rules with get_reliability_rules to show which tool-call shapes are gated.
3. Surface the lesson behind each rule with search_lessons, so the user sees the origin, not just the block.
4. Present a compact table (see the example below).
5. If there are zero active rules, point the user to the thumbgate-guard skill to promote their first one.

Field-by-field tool output and how rules map to lessons are in references/rule-stores.md.

Example

Input: "what is ThumbGate protecting me from in this repo?"

Action: call prevention_rules + get_reliability_rules, enrich each with search_lessons, then:

Rule / Gate	Blocks	From lesson	State
no-force-push-main	git push --force to main	overwrote a teammate's commit (2026-05)	active
verify-before-deploy	deploy without npm test	shipped a broken build	active

Troubleshooting

• Empty list: no rules promoted yet — use the thumbgate-guard skill, or npx thumbgate rules returns nothing because the lesson store is fresh.
• prevention_rules errors / MCP unreachable: fall back to npx thumbgate rules, then run the thumbgate-doctor skill to check wiring.
• A rule exists but never blocks: that's an enforcement question — check the thumbgate-blocked skill for fire counts and the thumbgate-doctor skill for hook installation.

Quality checklist (self-verify before delivering)

• I listed the live rules via prevention_rules (or the npx thumbgate rules fallback), not from memory.
• I tied each rule to its originating lesson via search_lessons so the user sees why.
• I distinguished prevention rules from reliability rules (get_reliability_rules).
• On an empty store, I pointed to the thumbgate-guard skill instead of inventing rules.
• I added no new logic — only read existing rule/lesson stores.