Guardrail hooks that block secret leaks and broken pushes. An independent model reviewing every diff before it ships. Cost-tiered routing so cheap tasks run on cheap models. A second brain that keeps itself current on a schedule. None of it waits to be asked — this is what actually sits behind the fixed price.
- blocking gates before anything reaches a protected branch
- 0
blocking gates before anything reaches a protected branch
- model tiers, matched to the work instead of one expensive default
- 0
model tiers, matched to the work instead of one expensive default
- scoped skills that fire on matching work, not from memory
- 0+
scoped skills that fire on matching work, not from memory
- real secret values an agent can read into its own context
- 0
real secret values an agent can read into its own context
Five hooks that actively block unsafe agent behavior.
Every one of these exists because it closed a real failure mode — and they block, they don't remind. Nothing here is speculative hardening.
- A code change
- The agent writes it
- Every pushFive blocking gates
- Ships to production
- 01
push-guard
Denies any push to a protected branch if the remote moved on, or if it's a force-push. No exceptions, no --force-with-lease past main.
- 02
senior-review
Before code reaches a protected branch, an independent, stronger AI model reviews the full diff and can reject it with numbered findings — a second opinion, not a rubber stamp.
- 03
secret-shield
Scans every push — and every fresh clone — for exposed credentials, including env-var names that leak by themselves regardless of their value.
- 04
quality-gate
Refuses to let an agent end its turn with code that doesn't typecheck. A green build isn't a suggestion here — it's a requirement.
- 05
env-guard
Agents can never read a real secret value into their own context — not through the editor, not through a shell trick. Nothing they do legitimately requires it.
Any gate can say no. The change goes back to the agent — nothing reaches the main branch until all five pass.
Cheap tasks run on cheap models. Hard calls escalate. That's the actual token-burn optimization.
Four tiers, matched to the work — not one expensive model doing everything.
- Fast, low-cost model
Search
Read-only breadth search — where is X used, which files import Y — so raw file dumps never land in the expensive context window.
- Mid-tier model
Mechanical work
Fully-specified, multi-file work: renames, boilerplate, applying a spec that's already been written.
- Top-tier model
Visual work
Every non-trivial UI decision — cheaper models design poorly, so visual work never runs on anything less.
- On-demand senior model
Architecture calls
Escalation for hard judgment calls and bugs that failed twice — read-only, returns advice, not edits.
Context survives across projects — and the knowledge base now maintains itself.
A structured, persistent knowledge base means a session never starts from zero, and a lesson paid for on one engagement doesn't get relearned on the next. It no longer waits for anyone to update it either: a scheduled agent distills every week's work into it, whether or not someone is at the keyboard. Four things get written down every time:
- 01Decisions
- 02Clients & people
- 03Project state
- 04Gotchas
Best practice that fires automatically — not best practice someone has to remember.
Each skill is a scoped capability that activates itself when the work matches it. A payment endpoint pulls in the security checklist whether or not anyone thought to ask for it.
- app-security
- nextjs-app-router
- strict-typescript
- pro-frontend
- nextjs-seo
- fixing-accessibility
- agentic-estimation
- deploy-checklist
- incident-response
- expo-react-native
- solution-architect
- web-design-nogos
- …and 50+ more
The machinery is ours. The output is yours.
None of the above matters unless it changes what lands in your repository. Four things it changes.
- 01
An audit trail, not a chat log
Every change arrives as a commit carrying the gate results and the review that let it through. Six months later you can still see what was decided and why.
- 02
Acceptance criteria before the build
Nothing starts without a written definition of done. If we can't agree on what finished looks like, we don't start — that's cheaper for both of us.
- 03
Written handover as standard
ADRs for the decisions, runbooks for the operations, documentation for the parts that outlive the engagement. Updates in writing, not in a status meeting.
- 04
No lock-in
Your repository, your infrastructure, your code. Nothing here runs on a proprietary runtime you'd have to keep paying us to operate.
Gem, our own macOS utility, is built and released on this exact setup — same fleet, same five gates, same senior sign-off. The repository is public, so its commit history is the audit trail described here.
See it on GitHubWant this level of discipline on your project?
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