AI Agent PR CI Firewall Checklist
A 15-minute CI firewall worksheet for making sure AI-generated pull requests cannot self-certify safety, test coverage, dependency changes, or merge readiness.
Label agent-authored PRs
Require run IDs, human owners, scope statements, and evidence packets before review starts.
Gate sensitive paths
Stop auth, billing, CI, deploy, prompt, MCP, and secret-related diffs until a human reviewer signs off.
Prove tests and dependencies
Require targeted evidence, baseline checks, dependency rationale, secret scans, and rollback notes.
Why this matters now
HN and GitHub signals on 2026-06-14 pointed to deterministic CI firewalls for AI-generated PRs, autonomous Claude/Codex workflows, coding-agent memory and superpower toolchains, and fresh agent security harnesses. The commercial gap is a practical PR gate teams can install before agent-written code touches production paths.
The 15-minute PR firewall rule
Every AI-authored pull request must pass a deterministic gate that is independent of the agent that wrote the code.
| PR surface | Failure mode | Required gate | Evidence to keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generated code diff | hidden auth/payment/permission changes | sensitive-path review | touched-path report |
| Tests | skipped or weakened tests | targeted + baseline tests | command output with run ID |
| Dependencies | slopsquatted or unnecessary packages | dependency diff review | package/version/rationale |
| Deployment | agent ships directly | no auto-deploy from agent PR | release owner signoff |
Core checklist
- Require an
ai-authoredoragent-assistedlabel, run ID, human owner, and allowed scope. - Block merge when sensitive paths are touched without named review.
- Fail the PR if tests were deleted, weakened, renamed away from CI, or skipped without explanation.
- Review dependency, lockfile, shell script, Dockerfile, workflow, and MCP/config changes.
- Run a secret scan and keep the scanner result.
- Require a PR evidence packet before merge; the agent cannot self-approve.
Minimal GitHub Actions policy sketch
name: ai-pr-firewall
on:
pull_request:
types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, labeled, unlabeled]
jobs:
firewall:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Sensitive path gate
run: |
git diff --name-only origin/main...HEAD > changed-files.txt
grep -E '(^|/)(auth|billing|payments|migrations|\.github|AGENTS.md|CLAUDE.md|mcp|secrets|deploy)' changed-files.txt && exit 1 || truePR evidence packet template
Run ID: Agent/tool/model: Human owner: Original requirement / ticket: Allowed scope: Touched files: Sensitive paths touched: yes / no Reviewer required: Dependency changes: Secret scan result: Targeted failing evidence: Targeted passing evidence: Baseline CI commands: Tests deleted/skipped/modified: Rollback note: Ready-to-merge owner signoff:
Turn this into an agentic engineering control sprint.
Pair this checklist with the OperatorForge AI bonuses for bug-report injection triage, secret-leak controls, sandboxing, local firewalls, MCP security, authorization boundaries, observability, rollback, verification, instruction governance, skill security, and spend controls.