hGATE is a manual, guided workflow for specification-driven development with an AI coding agent — domain-driven design, behavior-driven development, and test-driven development, connected by a traceability chain from spec to generated code to test to shipped change, so nothing can drift without leaving a trace.
The agent recommends and executes one specialist skill at a time. Humans confirm requirements, boundaries, plans, and every workflow transition.
Every stage traces back to an approved specification, not an improvised prompt. Generation never runs ahead of what's been agreed.
Bounded contexts (BCs) are established before behavior is written. Review checks that nothing generated implements behavior outside an approved spec.
Every stage leaves a record — spec, decision, test, shipped code — reconciled by a mandatory session-start protocol before new work continues, so nothing can drift without leaving a trace.
hgate-guide inspects your artifacts and recommends exactly one next skill —
it never starts that skill or advances lifecycle state on its own.
bc-enhancement below is how it deepens from
there; most BCs go through several rounds of it as understanding grows.bc-enhancement loops back into an already-shipped BC to add a new capability slice or change existing behavior. This is the normal way a BC matures — not a bug-fix exception — and every pass still closes with a full BC review.
domain-exploration and
bc-refinement can read your existing code, APIs, and schemas as evidence
to produce a first-draft spec — then bc-review full surfaces where the
spec and the code have already drifted apart.Already know your domain boundaries? architecture-decision-exploration
handles a cross-system technical decision on its own, without repeating domain mapping.
Every guardrail below produces something you can point at, not just a convention everyone's supposed to remember.
Every non-trivial technical or domain decision gets a durable record — context, alternatives considered, and consequences — not just the decision that won.
Review flags any generated code implementing behavior that isn't traceable to an approved spec line. The agent doesn't get to quietly add scope.
Every BDD scenario is linked to a real test. No orphaned tests, no untested scenarios sitting in a spec no one implemented — browse any BC's scenarios directly with the built-in Gherkin viewer instead of parsing raw Markdown by eye.
A conservative triviality gate lets no-spec-impact changes — a rename, a perf tweak — skip the full pipeline. It still leaves an audit entry; it's a fast path, not a bypass.
Decisions and lifecycle status live next to the bounded context they describe, not in one global file every parallel agent collides on.
Each bounded context gets an explicit ACL at its integration points, so an external system's model can't quietly leak into yours.
Every skill produces a specific, checkable artifact — never just code.
| Skill | Use it when | Main output |
|---|---|---|
| hgate-guide | You don't know the next workflow step | One recommended skill, never auto-started |
| domain-exploration | Problem, language, or BC boundaries are unclear | Confirmed domain map and context map |
| architecture-decision-exploration | A cross-system technical decision is unresolved | An ADR (Architecture Decision Record) or design report |
| bc-refinement | One BC needs an approved specification | Domain model, BDD scenarios, decisions, ACLs (anti-corruption layers) |
| bc-review | One BC needs a read-only audit | Evidence-based findings |
| bc-implementation | A refined BC has no material implementation | Tested implementation + traceability report |
| bc-enhancement | A BC needs a new capability slice, a changed rule, or a bug fixed | Synchronized spec + code, ghost behavior removed |
| cross-bc-validation | A completed journey crosses several implemented BCs | Feature-local contract + validation report |
Startup, scale-up, or enterprise client — the same eight skills apply. What flexes is how much gets formally signed off.
Compress documentation and skip formal sign-off meetings.
Every skill in play, without scheduled ceremony.
Traceability treated as a compliance artifact, not a courtesy.
Copy the skills in, install the session-start protocol, then hand it to your AI agent.
mkdir -p /path/to/your-project/.github/skills
cp -R skills/* /path/to/your-project/.github/skills/
# preserve each skill's SKILL.md, assets/, references/, decisions.md
cp templates/CLAUDE.hgate.md /path/to/your-project/CLAUDE.md
# already have a CLAUDE.md? append the template, keep your conventions
Use hgate-guide. I want to start using hGATE for this project.