1E — Gate Chain & Auto-Merge

Overview

After an experiment run completes with at least one KEEP, the engine publishes results to GitHub and optionally merges. The flow:

Experiment KEEP
  → push branch to GitHub
  → create PR (branch → dev) with metric delta in body
  → auto-merge PR (squash)
  → create promotion PR (dev → main — operator approves)
  → run state-update.sh (close feedback loop)

This is engine-level behavior — every repo that uses autoresearch gets GitHub audit trail for free.

Gate Chain (gates.py)

Three built-in gates that run after the experiment loop:

Gate	Function	Pass Condition
security	Custom security command	Exit 0
tests	Custom test command	Exit 0
confidence	MAD-based statistical score	>= min_confidence (default 1.0)

The engine’s per-experiment loop already handles metric improvement (is_improved()) and guard (guard.command). The gate chain only runs gates that add NEW validation beyond what the loop checked.

Gate Chain Flow

gate_result = run_gate_chain(repo_path, marker, result, marker.auto_merge.gates)
# Short-circuits on first failure
# Returns GateChainResult with .all_passed and .gates[]

GateResult Structure

@dataclass
class GateResult:
    name: str        # "security", "tests", "confidence"
    passed: bool
    reason: str      # human-readable explanation
    value: str       # measured value for logging

Auto-Publish (_publish_results)

Runs for every experiment that produces at least one KEEP, regardless of gate chain results:

1. Push branch — git push origin autoresearch/sonar-quality-apr05-11
2. Create PR — gh pr create --base dev --head <branch> with body containing metric, experiments, status
3. Auto-merge — gh pr merge --squash --auto (falls back to direct merge if auto-merge unavailable)
4. Promotion PR — gh pr create --base main --head dev (no auto-merge — operator approves)
5. State update — _run_state_update() calls automation/state-update.sh

PR Body Format

## Autoresearch Experiment

**Marker:** sonar-quality
**Metric:** 163 → 133 (lower)
**Experiments:** 1 total, 1 kept, 0 discarded
**Status:** KEEP

---
Auto-generated by autoresearch engine.

Configuration

auto_merge:
  enabled: true              # enable the publish flow
  target_branch: dev         # PR target (branch → this)
  gates: [security, tests, confidence]  # optional gate chain
  security_command: "..."    # custom security check
  test_command: "..."        # custom test suite
  min_confidence: 1.0        # MAD threshold (skip if < 3 keeps)

Files

File	Purpose
src/autoresearch/gates.py	Gate chain: GateResult, GateChainResult, run_gate_chain, 3 built-in gates
src/autoresearch/engine.py	_publish_results(), _create_promotion_pr(), _run_state_update()
src/autoresearch/marker.py	AutoMerge model
tests/test_gates.py	16 tests