Claude-Code-Game-Studios/.claude/skills/gate-check/references/4-assessment.md

/gate-check — Sections 4 and 4b: Assessment and Director Panel

Part of /gate-check. SKILL.md names when to read this file; the settings it resolved and the rules under its later headings still apply here.

4. Collaborative Assessment

In this file:

• 4. Collaborative Assessment: unverifiable items are never PASS
• 4b. Director Panel Assessment: review_mode decides whether directors spawn, workflow decides the panel width
• Gate IDs
• Naming the omissions, and applying the panel to the verdict

For items that can't be automatically verified, ask the user:

• "I can't automatically verify that the core loop plays well. Has it been playtested?"
• "No playtest report found. Has informal testing been done?"
• "Performance profiling data isn't available. Would you like to run /perf-profile?"

Never assume PASS for unverifiable items. Mark them as MANUAL CHECK NEEDED. An answer resolves the item: "no" or "not yet" is a checked, failed item (CONCERNS or FAIL, naming the skill that closes it — /design-review [doc] for an unreviewed concept or GDD) — except a play question at the Production gate (a human has played the Vertical Slice; at minimal, the core loop is fun on the current build), where "not yet" means nobody has played it: NOT ASSESSED (gate-production.md). Only an unanswered item or "I don't know" stays MANUAL CHECK NEEDED, which Section 5 turns into NOT ASSESSED.

This applies to questions about the project's state. Declining an offer to produce missing data (e.g. /perf-profile) leaves the item NOT ASSESSED; at performance.enforce: off it stays out of the verdict.

---

4b. Director Panel Assessment

The panel is set by two independent axes, both resolved in Phase 1: review_mode decides whether the panel runs, workflow decides how wide it is.

Axis 1 — review_mode decides whether any director spawns:

• solo → skip the panel entirely. Note in output: "Director Panel skipped — Solo mode. Gate verdict based on artifact and quality checks only." Proceed to Phase 5.
• lean → run the panel (phase gates always run in lean mode — this is their purpose).
• full → run the panel.

Axis 2 — workflow decides the panel width. Directors are Opus-tier, so the panel is sized to the project rather than fixed at four. The gate still runs at every tier; only its breadth scales:

workflow	Panel	Directors
minimal	1	producer
standard	2	technical-director, producer
full	4	creative-director, technical-director, producer, art-director

producer is in every panel — scope and schedule readiness is the one judgment no tier makes optional. technical-director joins at standard because that is the first tier requiring architecture artifacts. creative-director and art-director join at full, the only tier requiring the full art bible and UX spec set for them to assess.

Width is not the same as strictness. A narrower panel does not soften the verdict: the escalation rule in .claude/docs/director-gates.md is unchanged — the strictest verdict returned by whoever ran still wins. Do not infer PASS from a perspective that was never consulted.

Before generating the final verdict, spawn the directors for the resolved tier as parallel subagents via Agent using the parallel gate protocol from .claude/docs/director-gates.md. Issue all the Agent calls simultaneously — do not wait for one before starting the next.

Gate IDs:

1. creative-director — gate CD-PHASE-GATE (.claude/docs/director-gates/cd-phase-gate.md)
2. technical-director — gate TD-PHASE-GATE (.claude/docs/director-gates/td-phase-gate.md)
3. producer — gate PR-PHASE-GATE (.claude/docs/director-gates/pr-phase-gate.md)
4. art-director — gate AD-PHASE-GATE (.claude/docs/director-gates/ad-phase-gate.md)

Pass to each the target phase name, the resolved workflow tier, the target gate's required and recommended artifacts at the resolved tier (the loaded gate file's checklist after its tier reduction and the qa.level relaxation — what this gate asks for, not what a later one will), the list of artifacts present, and its gate's own context — named here, so this session never has to read the gate files:

• CD-PHASE-GATE: the game pillars and core fantasy (from design/gdd/game-concept.md, else design/game-brief.md).
• TD-PHASE-GATE: the architecture document path, the engine reference path (docs/engine-reference/<engine>/VERSION.md), and the ADR list.
• PR-PHASE-GATE: the sprint and milestone artifacts present, team.size as resolved above (with the current sprint plan's capacity, if a plan exists), and the number of stories under production/epics/ whose status is Blocked. At workflow: minimal, pass the Build order in design/game-brief.md as the plan — that tier has no sprint plan.
• AD-PHASE-GATE: the art and visual artifacts present, the Visual Identity Anchor (from design/gdd/game-concept.md, else the "Art & audio direction" line of design/game-brief.md), and the art bible path.

Pass each context item as one of three things, so no director has to guess:

• Present — its path or value (0 blocked stories is a value).
• "none" — the target gate (or an earlier one) requires or recommends it at this tier and it does not exist (no architecture document at /gate-check pre-production). For the director that is a fact about the project to judge, not a missing input.
• "not expected before [phase]" — the target gate does not ask for it yet; name the phase whose gate first does (the architecture document and ADRs before Pre-Production, the sprint plan before Production). One this tier never requires is "not required at workflow: [tier]" (any sprint plan at minimal). Neither is ever passed as "none", and neither is a finding — a director judges readiness for the phase being entered, not a later one.

Name the omissions in the output. Below the Director Panel summary, when the panel ran narrower than four, state which perspectives did not run and how to get them — e.g. "Panel: 2 of 4 (workflow: standard). Creative and Art perspectives not consulted. Raise modes.rigor to full (or set modes.workflow: full) for the complete panel." Name the setting the config block shows as workflow's source: when modes.workflow is set on its own, raising modes.rigor does not change it. Never point to --review full for this — --review decides whether the panel runs, not how wide it is. A silently narrow panel reads as a clean bill of health from reviewers who never looked.

Collect every response from the directors that ran, then present the Director Panel summary (one row per director that ran; name the ones workflow left out):

## Director Panel Assessment

Creative Director:  [READY / CONCERNS / NOT READY / NOT ASSESSED]
  [feedback]

Technical Director: [READY / CONCERNS / NOT READY / NOT ASSESSED]
  [feedback]

Producer:           [READY / CONCERNS / NOT READY / NOT ASSESSED]
  [feedback]

Art Director:       [READY / CONCERNS / NOT READY / NOT ASSESSED]
  [feedback]

Apply to the verdict:

• Any director returns NOT READY → verdict is minimum FAIL (no override turns a FAIL into a stage change — Section 6)
• Any director returns CONCERNS → verdict is minimum CONCERNS
• Any director returns NOT ASSESSED (and none returned NOT READY or CONCERNS) → verdict at best NOT ASSESSED; name the input that director said was missing — it never counts as READY
• Every director that ran returns READY → eligible for PASS (still subject to artifact and quality checks from Section 3)

---