/ask-gate

Ask-Gate (AGP) governs the moment just before a handler-facing question. Asking is cheap to type and expensive to waste — a question the agent could have answered itself is a nag, and a high-stakes question asked with the wrong options or framing burns the one interaction that mattered. AGP makes AskUserQuestion a deliberate, quality-gated reflex instead of a casual reach: triage whether to ask at all, ask routine questions directly after a quick checklist, and escalate the questions that actually matter through /insight-critique then /insight-assess before surfacing them.

AGP is invoked two ways: automatically, as the standard reflex before any AskUserQuestion (it can fire inside COP's surface step, inside NSP's surface step, or standalone); or directly, as /ask-gate to quality-gate a specific pending question.

Structured execution spec: protocol.yon. Read it for the canonical rules and step sequence; this file is explanation. The two must stay in sync — if you edit one, update the other and refresh the @STAMP date.

The protocol — three steps

1. Triage (anti-nag)

A question is the handler's to answer only if it cannot be resolved from the request, the code, or sensible defaults. If it can be resolved, resolve it, state the choice you made, and do not ask. Asking a resolvable question is the single most common nag failure — this gate exists to kill it. This mirrors COP's step-1 anti-nag triage; if nothing genuinely needs the handler, AGP surfaces nothing.

2. Classify stakes

If a question is warranted, classify it: