Agents Shipgate
Deterministic merge verdicts for AI-generated agent PRs.
Agents Shipgate fits a real niche: pre-merge static analysis of agent tool surfaces with a deterministic verdict. Local-first and zero-telemetry, it complements runtime guardrails. Early-stage (v0.15.0, pre-1.0) but actively iterating; pair it with runtime enforcement for full coverage.
Verified 10d ago · liveness 62/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/agents-shipgate
- AI engineers shipping tool-using agents needing deterministic PR-time capability review
- Platform teams building agent CI/CD pipelines with merge gates that don't require running agents
- Security/GRC reviewers who want audit trails and release evidence without importing user code
- Teams using multiple agent frameworks that need a single pre-merge check for tool-surface changes
- Teams relying on runtime guardrails or call-time policy enforcement
- Projects without AI-generated agent code or tool surface changes in PRs
- Teams needing LLM evaluation or evals frameworks
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Skip Agents Shipgate if you need runtime guardrails, call-time policy enforcement, or LLM evaluation — it only covers the pre-merge capability review slot, and it requires a shipgate.yaml manifest and a CI pipeline to be useful.
Requires a checked-in shipgate.yaml manifest; teams without one must invest in setup before seeing value.
Agents Shipgate is free and open source (Apache-2.0), which makes it attractive for teams that need a deterministic pre-merge gate without per-seat fees. There are no paid tiers, so the only cost is the engineering time to adopt and maintain it. This pricing fits startups and enterprises alike, but it's not a hosted service — you must run it in your own CI.
In short
Agents Shipgate — Deterministic merge verdicts for AI-generated agent PRs. Best for AI engineers shipping tool-using agents needing deterministic PR-time capability review, Platform teams building agent CI/CD pipelines with merge gates that don't require running agents, Security/GRC reviewers who want audit trails and release evidence without importing user code. Free to use.
What's new in Agents Shipgate
Checked 8 days agoAcross the latest 4 updates: 2 feature updates and 2 news mentions.
Two static adapter pilots, two insufficient-evidence verdicts
Pinned OpenAI Agents SDK and LangChain fixtures both extracted two tools; both stopped at insufficient evidence. Outputs and limits published.
Agents Shipgate v0.15.0: real-history accuracy baseline, config-bound checks, Claude Code plugin marketplace
Published first real-history accuracy numbers with confusion-matrix limitations. Added config-bound dynamic-toolkit checks and duplicate action-surface detection. Added Claude Code plugin marketplace and verify_required.
agents-shipgate 0.14.0: codex-boundary-json replaces agent-json
Removed --format agent-json and agent_result_v1 schema. Replacement is --format codex-boundary-json. Upgrade path documented.
Agents Shipgate v0.14.0: fail-closed on missing config, advisory self-dogfood, review_required routing
Withdrew premature 1.0.0-alpha. Non-preview verify fails closed when config missing. Added self-dogfood workflow and routed high-concern findings to review_required.
What people actually say about Agents Shipgate — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
2 mentions across 1 source (GitHub) · researched Jul 4, 2026.
Average across the 1 source that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Deterministic merge verdicts prevent unsafe agent code from landing.
- +Local-first design: no network calls, no LLM, no telemetry by default.
- +Supports MCP, OpenAPI 3.x, and multiple agent SDKs out-of-the-box.
- +Capability lock and diff artifacts create clear audit trails.
- +GitHub Action offers multiple enforcement modes (advisory, strict).
- −Too early for production trust—only 104 GitHub stars.
- −No community discussion outside GitHub—lack of third-party validation.
- −Only one documented issue, a demo rehearsal, not real bug reports.
- −Static analysis cannot catch all runtime agent misbehaviors.
- −Learning curve for writing shipgate.yaml manifests and interpreting diffs.
- • No hidden costs—entirely free open-source tool.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Agents Shipgate? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: September 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Static analysis of MCP tool exports
- OpenAPI 3.x spec analysis
- OpenAI Agents SDK Python entrypoint checks
- Anthropic Messages API artifact support
- Google ADK Python and YAML config analysis
- LangChain/LangGraph static Python input checks
- CrewAI static Python input checks
- OpenAI API artifact support
- Codex repo config and plugin package analysis
- Claude Code plugin marketplace detection (v0.15.0)
- n8n workflow JSON and source-control stub analysis
- Deterministic merge verdict: mergeable, human review, insufficient evidence, blocked
- Capability lock and diff artifacts (capabilities.lock.json, capability-lock-diff.json/.md)
- SARIF output for GitHub code-scanning integration
- GitHub Action with advisory, baseline, strict, and governance modes (v0.14.0)
About Agents Shipgate
Agents Shipgate is an open-source, local-first CLI and GitHub Action from Three Moons Lab that verifies AI-generated agent capability changes and returns a deterministic merge verdict before code lands. It reads a shipgate.yaml manifest, declared local tool sources, policy/trust-root files, and PR diffs, then produces verifier artifacts that tell reviewers (or an autonomous coding agent) whether the change merges, needs human review, lacks evidence, or is blocked. Run it on PRs where Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, or a human adds or changes MCP tools, OpenAPI operations, framework-declared tools, prompts, permission scopes, approval policies, prohibited actions, shipgate.yaml, or CI release gates. Targeted at AI engineers, platform engineers building agent CI/CD, and security/GRC teams who need audit trails without importing user code. It's not an LLM eval framework, runtime guardrail, or security audit; it owns the pre-merge capability-review slot. While static and non-calling by default — no LLM calls, no MCP server connections, and zero telemetry — the v0.15.0 release adds fail-closed config handling, config-bound dynamic-toolkit checks, and Claude Code plugin marketplace detection. For teams shipping tool-using agents through CI/CD, it offers a deterministic, auditable alternative to ad-hoc code review, complementing runtime guardrails and evals rather than replacing them.
Behind the Verdict
Most agent-safety tools stop at design-time advice or runtime monitoring. Agents Shipgate targets the gap before merge: a static, deterministic check that says merge, human review, insufficient evidence, or blocked. If your CI pipeline handles hundreds of AI-generated PRs, this gives reviewers a data point grounded in local policy, not vibes. We'd reach for it when Codex or Claude Code is touching tool surfaces daily. It reads MCP exports, OpenAPI 3.x specs, and a dozen framework SDKs without making network calls. No LLM calls, no MCP server connections, zero telemetry by default. That quiet profile is a feature for teams that can't leak code to a third party. The outputs are structured: agent-handoff.json, verifier.json, report.json, a capability lock and diff, SARIF, and even a content-addressed attestation. A coding agent can switch on decision and completion_allowed directly. But the tool doesn't certify safety. It's static analysis, not a runtime guardrail. You still need observability and runtime policy checks. And the verdict is only as good as the manifest. If shipgate.yaml or policies are wrong, the gate is wrong. Early adopters should run it in advisory mode first, then move to strict governance. Compared to Agent Shipcheck — actual product name confusion — Shipgate is independent and focused on capability review. It's not an eval framework; don't use it to measure LLM quality.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Agents Shipgate actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You've created a PR that adds a new MCP server to your agent. You want to make sure it doesn't introduce wildcard paths or missing scopes before a human reviews.
Outcome: Run agents-shipgate verify --ci-mode advisory. The tool scans the MCP export, flags any wildcard paths or missing scopes, and outputs a report with severity counts. You get a PR comment summarizing the semantic capability diff, helping you catch issues early.
You manage a repository where Codex and Claude Code generate PRs that modify agent tools and prompts. You need to enforce a deterministic merge gate.
Outcome: Add Agents Shipgate as a GitHub Action with strict mode. It checks every PR against shipgate.yaml, computes a merge verdict (mergeable, human review, insufficient evidence, blocked), and posts it as a PR comment. Non-compliant PRs are blocked automatically, providing a consistent gate across all agent-generated
You need audit evidence that agent capability changes were reviewed before release, without running the agents themselves.
Outcome: Configure Agents Shipgate to generate attestation.json (content-addressed) and a release report (report.json) for each verified PR. These artifacts provide a deterministic record of the merge verdict and findings, satisfying audit trail requirements without executing untrusted code.
Use Cases
- Add a release gate to GitHub Actions that blocks PRs expanding agent capabilities without approval policies.
- Scan every PR touching MCP exports for missing scopes, wildcard paths, or undocumented side effects.
- Generate a structured release-readiness report for AI agent PRs before staging or production deployment.
- Provide coding agents (Codex, Claude Code) with a deterministic merge verdict contract they can act on autonomously.
- Attest release artifacts with a content-addressed record for audit trails and compliance reviews.
- Review OpenAI Agents SDK PRs: statically reads @function_tool decorators for findings.
- Review Claude tool-use agent PRs: scans JSON tools array and system prompt for findings.
- Add release gate to Anthropic Claude projects with agents-shipgate.
Limitations
- Agents Shipgate is an open-source, local-first CLI and GitHub Action that verifies AI-generated agent capability changes.
- It requires a declared shipgate.yaml manifest and does not run the agent or import user code by default, and static analysis can miss dynamic tool registrations or runtime-derived schemas.
- As of v0.15.0, it is pre-1.0 and subject to contract changes, and v0.14.0 replaced the legacy agent-json format with codex-boundary-json.
as of 2026-08-20
Verification history
We have re-verified Agents Shipgate 5 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Agents Shipgate tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Open Source
$0/mo
Ideal for
AI engineers, platform engineers, and security teams that want a deterministic pre-merge gate for agent PRs and are comfortable running a CLI/GitHub Action in their own CI without vendor support.
What this tier adds
Free, Apache-2.0 licensed; includes all features (CLI, GitHub Action, static analysis for multiple frameworks, SARIF output). No paid tiers; you run it yourself.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Agents Shipgate's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Agents Shipgate is free and open source (Apache-2.0), which makes it attractive for teams that need a deterministic pre-merge gate without per-seat fees. There are no paid tiers, so the only cost is the engineering time to adopt and maintain it. This pricing fits startups and enterprises alike, but it's not a hosted service — you must run it in your own CI.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Agents Shipgate — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
For a single PR, you can be up and running in under 30 minutes: install the CLI, create a basic shipgate.yaml, and run verify --ci-mode advisory. Full integration as a GitHub Action with strict mode and SARIF might take 2-4 hours including testing. Teams with multiple agent frameworks may need extra time to configure all tool sources.
Switching to or from Agents Shipgate
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From manual review processes: adopt Agents Shipgate as an automated pre-merge check by creating shipgate.yaml and adding the GitHub Action to your CI pipeline.
- →From agent-json format (v0.14.0): replace with codex-boundary-json; update any scripts that parsed the old format.
- ↗To a runtime guardrail: if you need call-time enforcement, you'll need a separate tool like an MCP gateway or guardrail service; Agents Shipgate only covers pre-merge review.
- ↗To a hosted CI solution: if you prefer managed CI, you'll need to wrap Agents Shipgate in your CI pipeline or use a service that runs it for you.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
Official links
Tools that pair well with Agents Shipgate
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Agents Shipgate, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Pixee
Agentic security engineering platform that triages, fixes vulnerabilities, and ships PRs developers merge.
Cycode
Secure and govern AI-generated code from prompt to runtime with agentic development security.
Checkmarx
Agentic application security platform governing AI-generated code from creation to runtime.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Agents Shipgate vs Spider Cloud
Choose Agents Shipgate if you need deterministic, pre-merge verification of AI agent capability changes in CI/CD—it's free, open-source, and integrates with multiple agent SDKs. Choose Spider Cloud if your AI agents require fast, reliable web data extraction at scale, with a freemium model and strong anti-blocking capabilities. They address fundamentally different stages of the AI agent lifecycle: governance vs. data ingestion.
Agents Shipgate vs Presto Voice
Presto Voice and Agents Shipgate serve entirely different domains. If you're a QSR chain needing to automate drive-thru ordering with upselling, Presto Voice is the clear pick. If you're an AI engineering team shipping agent tools and need deterministic pre-merge capability checks, Agents Shipgate's open-source free model is a no-brainer. There's no direct competition—choose based on your problem: restaurant operations or agent CI/CD.
Agents Shipgate vs Temporal Ai
Choose Agents Shipgate if your bottleneck is pre-merge trust and audit for agent tool changes — it's free, deterministic, and integrates directly into CI. Choose Temporal if you need post-deploy durability, crash recovery, and long-running (possibly human-in-the-loop) agent orchestration where state persistence is critical. They solve different halves of the 'reliable agent' problem.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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