# Eve complete-family release gate preparation — 2026-09

Task 12.7 now has a fail-closed release-gate CLI over the exact Task 12.2
evaluation design. The candidate manifest must enumerate all 15 families in
design order; a missing, duplicate, reordered, or invented family blocks the
whole release. Each family points to separate content-hashed prospective lock
and result artifacts. The gate reruns the cohort validator, verifies the unit
evidence bytes, requires `family-closed`, and independently refuses any
non-passing or incomplete stratum or any hard-lock event.

The other admission boundaries are explicit rather than inferred. Every design
grader lane must be accounted for. Pure and human lanes are mandatory, while a
model lane may be declared unused; every used lane needs current content-hashed
validation over the exact family case classes. The negative-control list must
exactly match the design by content digest, every control must pass recently,
and every applicable provider route—including a zero-cost local route—must carry
a current nonnegative USD price and evidence. Any family with high or critical
strata also needs a current passing Task 4.8-shaped red-team record, accepted by
its semantic verifier, with no unmeasured turn-capable leg. Candidate-controlled
freshness horizons cannot be weakened beyond 30 days.

The evaluator emits a deterministic report, and a separate verifier recomputes
that report so a retained status or refusal list cannot be edited independently
of its inputs. The focused suite passes a complete two-family green contract
fixture through the same gate engine and observes red for each Task 12.7
boundary: missing family, stale family, unvalidated grader, absent negative
control, unpriced provider leg, missing or stale high-risk red-team evidence,
floor breach, stale artifact digest, weakened freshness policy, and rewritten
report. It also runs the real CLI against the retained incomplete inventory and
requires a blocking exit.

The retained real-design preparation candidate is intentionally blocked: 0 of 15
families pass and 106 explicit refusals remain. It inventories every family but
supplies no fabricated cohort results, human labels, grader validation,
negative-control evidence, or pricing receipts. It references the latest Task
4.8 red-team record, and the semantic verifier rejects that record because the
later Security-gate inventory added Tasks 17.22, 17.25, and 17.26. The DCC row
also content-binds the Task 12.10 creative extension, which blocks because Task
12.9 is not ratified and all four creative result artifacts are absent. This
proves gate behavior only. Task 12.7, Phase 12, G7, and G14 remain open until
real family manifests satisfy the gate; a synthetic green contract fixture is
never release admission.

Run the current blocked check with:

```bash
node tools/eve-everywhere/evaluate-family-release-gate.mjs \
  --manifest=docs/audits/eve-sota-family-release-gate/2026-09-13.candidate.json \
  --output=docs/audits/eve-sota-family-release-gate/2026-09-13.report.json
```

The command exits nonzero while blocked. Verify that this nonzero report is an
honest fresh evaluation with:

```bash
node tools/eve-everywhere/verify-family-release-gate-report.mjs
```