Mechanical Stage-Gate (for a stochastic executor)
Parent: stages-and-gates
Cooper's executor is a human cross-functional team; his gate is a periodic review meeting (heavy, judgment-based). vibe-linter swaps two things:
- executor = an untrusted, stochastic AI → the "free inside a stage" is an agent loop's freedom
- gate = a mechanically verifiable
done(a deterministic mint), continuous / automatic — not a manager's go/kill
Precise coordinate in the formal map (formalizations):
sequential Hoare triples (1b) + the supervisory gate (1d) + the option's termination (1c) — with the executor replaced by an LLM and the gate replaced by an LCF-kernel-style mechanical certification.
= an automated, mechanically-gated Stage-Gate / hierarchical-option system for an untrusted AI executor. Cooper gives the mature structure & principles (funnel-not-tunnel, escalating commitment, deliverables + criteria); RL options give recursion + termination; Hoare/LCF give "gate = proof obligation"; the contribution is porting it to an executor that didn't exist in Cooper's era, and replacing judgment-gates with machine-gates.
Naming: stages (free zones) + gates (boundaries); script the stage skeleton, gate the boundaries → script used right.