ThumbGate Verification evidence
guide | background agent governance

# Background Agent Governance for Agent PRs

Background agents can draft changes while humans work elsewhere, but review becomes the bottleneck. ThumbGate adds pre-dispatch checks, run reports, isolated task lanes, and evidence-backed review routing before unattended agent work piles up.

👍 Thumbs up reinforces good behavior
👎 Thumbs down blocks repeated mistakes

## Why this page exists

- Background agents need a real run ledger, not just a pile of PRs.
- The highest ROI control is risk-tiered review: stricter checks for protected branches, high-failure agents, and large blast-radius changes.
- ThumbGate turns CI failures and human review feedback into Pre-Action Checks so the same failed agent pattern gets blocked before the next run.

## Why this became urgent

Teams are moving from local agent sessions to unattended background work. That changes the review problem: humans no longer inspect one assistant transcript at a time; they receive a queue of agent-created branches, PRs, and CI failures.

If context alignment happens in Slack, Linear, Jira, or a planning thread, the agent run also needs a durable record of what was agreed, where it executed, which gates fired, and what evidence came back.

## What ThumbGate adds

- A background-agent run ledger with agent ID, source, branch, PR number, gate counts, CI outcome, and changed-file count.
- A pre-dispatch governance check for high-failure agents, protected branches, and large blast-radius runs.
- Post-run audit that can convert CI failures into structured thumbs-down feedback and future prevention rules.
- A report command for review queues: npx thumbgate background-governance --json.
- A risk check command for dispatch systems: npx thumbgate background-governance --check --agent-id=builder --branch=main --files-changed=25 --json.

## Where this creates revenue

This is a clean Workflow Hardening Sprint wedge. The buyer does not need a broad platform migration; they need one background-agent workflow hardened from context intake to isolated execution to risk-tiered review.

The promise stays honest: ThumbGate does not remove human review. It makes the review queue smaller, better labeled, and backed by evidence before a risky agent PR reaches a reviewer.

## FAQ

Does ThumbGate replace human review for background agents?

No. ThumbGate reduces review load by blocking known bad actions earlier, warning on risky dispatches, and attaching run evidence so humans can focus on high-risk changes.

What should teams check before dispatching a background agent?

Check recent agent failure rate, prior gate blocks, target branch, expected blast radius, isolated execution environment, CI expectations, and the human context that authorized the task.

How does this connect to the Workflow Hardening Sprint?

The sprint can harden one background-agent workflow end to end: context intake, pre-dispatch governance, sandbox routing, CI audit, prevention rules, and proof review.