Why Phase Gating

Why phase-gating

Crickets and Agent M split the development lifecycle into discrete, gated phases — plan → work → review → release — instead of freestyling all of it in one pass. Each phase has an entry condition, a single responsibility, and an exit gate: you don't write code in the plan phase, and you don't merge in the work phase.

The payoff is that context stays scoped and verification stays honest. A single sprawling session blurs planning, coding, and review until none is done well; gated phases keep each step small enough to finish and check before the next begins. It adapts the Stage-Gate model from product development — staged work with explicit go/no-go gates — to an agent loop.

Research & precedent

• Phase-gate (Stage-Gate) process — Robert G. Cooper's staged model with go/no-go decision gates between phases (phase-gate process).

Related

• Why deterministic gates run first
• Purpose and scope