Validation Gate
How /product:validate-assumptions determines whether it is safe to proceed
Immediately after Phase 1 (Vision/Scope — the stage where you decide what to build) completes,
the /product:validate-assumptions command runs. This is where the
Go/No-Go decision — whether it is safe to move forward — is made. The result is written
to the gates field of work/pipeline-progress.json.
The decision rule is straightforward.
- No-Go (cannot proceed): The assumption with the highest collapse impact — the one whose failure would cause the most damage to the business — has not yet been validated, and neither the validation method nor the kill threshold has been defined.
- Go (safe to proceed): Every other case. Even if unvalidated assumptions remain, a Go is issued as long as a plan exists for how to validate them.
This mechanism prevents the stall of waiting for a perfect business plan before moving forward, while still enforcing the minimum requirement that the highest-risk assumption must have a defined validation approach before proceeding.