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The gate guard is PM’s safety mechanism for the highest-stakes skip: writing source code before a reconcile gate has run. It is a PreToolUse hook that intercepts every Edit, Write, and NotebookEdit call and blocks them while the active epic has reconcileNeeded: true. This is the one place PM tolerates mechanical blocking over pure instruction — protecting you from overwriting work before a detour is properly reconciled.

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How it works

Every Edit, Write, and NotebookEdit call is intercepted by the hook. Before allowing the tool call to proceed, PM checks whether the currently active epic has reconcileNeeded: true — meaning the epic popped out of a detour and still owes a reconcile gate.
  • If reconcileNeeded is true: the tool call is blocked with a message directing you to run the reconciler agent via /pm:resume.
  • If reconcileNeeded is false or absent: the tool call proceeds normally. Epics with no pending reconcile are completely unaffected.

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Always on for reconcile-owed epics

This check is always active for any epic carrying reconcileNeeded: true — including epics that already had the flag set before this behavior was introduced. It previously required an explicit set-gate-guard on; real-usage feedback showed that opt-in was never actually turned on across several sessions where it would have caught a real skip, so the default was flipped. There is no bypass for this case. Running set-gate-guard off does not silence the reconcile-owed block. The only path through it is completing the reconcile gate: run /pm:resume, let the reconciler agent complete the reconcile gate, and the block clears automatically. Once cleared, file writes proceed as normal.

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The set-gate-guard command

The command still exists and toggles the repo-level gateGuard flag in state.json:
This flag is reserved for any future generalization of the hook to additional checks beyond the reconcile-owed case. It has no effect on the reconcile-owed block described above.

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Checking gate guard status

Run /pm:gate-guard at any time to inspect the current state of the hook — whether gateGuard is on or off in state.json, and whether any epic currently carries reconcileNeeded: true. This is the fastest way to understand why a write was blocked without digging into state.json directly.
If you see “blocked by gate guard” on an Edit or Write call, the only resolution is to run /pm:resume and complete the reconcile gate. There is no workaround — set-gate-guard off will not help here.
The gate guard hook is dormant until /pm:init has been run in a project. It activates only in projects that have been initialized and have a .conductor/state.json present.