Run states and the gate

The protocol owns the vocabulary and per-flow steps below. The gateway owns transitions and prerequisite checks; clients display its state and reasons. These tables list configured steps, not every possible transition or replay. See How Farmslot works for the operating loop.

Run states

State	Protocol category
created	Waiting or requires action
grading	Active
writing-task	Active
slot-finding	Active
preparing	Active
dispatching	Active
monitoring	Active
reviewing	Active
fixing	Active
review-failed	Waiting or requires action
reconciling	Active
completing	Active
human-gating	Waiting or requires action
needs-decision	Waiting or requires action
ci-watching	Active
paused	Waiting or requires action
done	Terminal
blocked	Waiting or requires action
failed	Terminal
cancelled	Terminal

An active category does not prove that a process is progressing. Uncertain delivery requires reconciliation. A terminal state closes execution; done does not guarantee successful validation. Read the retained outcome and evidence. blocked is not terminal in this protocol: recovery may resume it. Gate, pause and reviewer-failure states require their recorded reason and next action.

Flows and publication

Flow	Canonical steps, in order	Human gate in pipeline	Publication path
qa	find-slot → write-task → prepare → dispatch → monitor → human-gate → complete	Yes	Report or posted review; no new PR
fix-bug	find-slot → grade → write-task → prepare → dispatch → monitor → review → complete → human-gate → finalize → ci-watch	Yes	Gateway finalize: publish or update PR
review-pr	find-slot → write-task → prepare → dispatch → monitor → human-gate → complete	Yes	Report or posted review; no new PR
dev	find-slot → write-task → prepare → dispatch → monitor → review → complete → human-gate → finalize → ci-watch	Yes	Gateway finalize: publish or update PR
pr-complete	find-slot → write-task → prepare → dispatch → monitor → complete → finalize → ci-watch	No separate human-gate step	Gateway finalize: publish or update PR
update-branch	write-task → dispatch → monitor → review → complete → finalize → ci-watch	No separate human-gate step	Gateway finalize: publish or update PR

dev and fix-bug may create a PR. pr-complete and update-branch operate on an existing PR. QA acknowledges a report, and review can post or dismiss its retained review. Neither creates a new PR. Interactive development can open its own draft PR; its operator-driven completion is an exception to the autonomous flow table. Policy can add decisions inside steps, so absence of a human-gate step is not permission to bypass approval or prerequisites.

The approval boundary

Readiness checks compose the owning deterministic, review and evidence contracts. Missing, failed, stale or invalid prerequisites prevent normal advancement. Authorized evidence attestation can waive only the scoped claim-policy/binding findings permitted by ADR-062; integrity failures and unrelated prerequisites remain enforced. The gateway rechecks at decision resolution and publication. Inspection and authorized recovery remain separate actions while readiness is incomplete.

Approval binds the selected inventory and validation identity. It does not turn report prose, a video file or a checked box into claim proof. Publication must refuse changed approved bytes or selection. See the fail-closed lifecycle specification and evidence specification.