CI/CD gating is a pipeline step that stops a change from moving forward unless it passes defined checks. A gate returns a clear pass or fail. If it fails, the merge or deployment is blocked until the code is fixed or an approved exception is recorded.
Gates differ from warnings. A warning can be ignored under deadline pressure; a gate can’t. That’s why governance teams put their most important policies behind gates, such as no deprecated modules, no hardcoded credentials and no unapproved Terraform providers.
Steampunk Spotter works as a gate for Ansible and Terraform code. It checks Playbooks, configurations and plans in CI/CD and fails the job on a policy violation, before the code reaches Red Hat AAP, or another execution platform.
