jev-gate — ask before you act
Run this before an action you would not want to take unsupervised: deleting or overwriting data, moving money, touching production, messaging a customer, changing credentials. The gate answers with a verdict, a confidence number, and the rule that fired — and keeps the decision in a log a human can review later.
Setup (once)
- Get a key at https://jev-gate.fly.dev — 14-day free trial, card required and not charged during the trial; cancel any time in the billing portal.
- Export it:
export JEV_GATE_KEY=jgate_...
That is the whole install: one key, one HTTPS call. No package, no dependencies
beyond curl.
Check an action
scripts/jev-gate-check "about to delete 1,204 rows from the staging events table"
Exit codes, which is all an agent needs:
| code | verdict | what to do |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | approve | continue with the action |
| 2 | hold | pause this action and queue it for routine human review; do not retry |
| 3 | escalate | stop, tell the user a human decision is required |
| 1 | error | the gate could not answer — treat as blocked, never guess |
The raw call, if you would rather do it yourself:
curl -s https://jev-gate.fly.dev/v1/gate \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $JEV_GATE_KEY" \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"transcript":"agent is about to drop the orders table in production","tool_calls":["psql drop"]}'
{
"action": "escalate",
"confidence": 0.38,
"violation": 0.71, "needs_human": 0.72, "risk": 2.4,
"reasons": ["risk 2.40 ≥ 2.00", "needs_human 0.72 > 0.60"],
"latency_ms": 474
}
Branch on action — never on the prose. reasons is the rule that fired, and it is what
makes the decision explainable to the human who reviews it.
Reading the log
Every call lands in the account's dashboard at https://jev-gate.fly.dev/dashboard with the
transcript, the verdict, the reasons, and the latency. There you can tune the four
thresholds it branches on (approve if confidence ≥, hold if violation >,
escalate if needs_human >, escalate if risk ≥), work the review queue for the muddy
middle, and export CSV/JSON. Reviews are closeable: mark reviewed, annotate, reopen.
Going further
- MCP:
curl -sO https://jev-gate.fly.dev/client/jev_gate_mcp.py, then point your MCP config at that file — the gate becomes acheck_actiontool. - Python, any framework:
from jev_gate_mcp import guardedwraps your tool dispatcher so held and escalated calls raise before the side effect. - Claude Code:
curl -sO https://jev-gate.fly.dev/client/claude_code_hook.pyand wire it as aPreToolUsehook; exit 2 blocks the call. - All client files: https://jev-gate.fly.dev/client
Rules of thumb
- Gate the action, not the thought: pass what is about to happen and the context behind it.
- A
holdis not a failure — it is the product working. Queue it and keep moving. - If the gate is unreachable, block. A firewall that guesses is not a firewall.