Release Gates for LLM Features

A gate should state what blocks release, what warns but allows release, and what evidence must be reviewed by a human owner.

The rule needs to be tied to the workflow. A generic LLM score is not enough if the actual risk sits in tool use, retrieval freshness, escalation, or policy handling.

Good blockers are concrete: unsafe action, missing required escalation, stale retrieval for critical content, unreproducible critical failure, or regression on a protected task set.

If every issue blocks release, the gate becomes unusable. If nothing blocks release, the gate is theater.

The release review should produce a memo: inputs reviewed, known failures, thresholds, blockers, residual risks, and the owner of follow-up work.

That memo becomes the baseline for the next candidate release.