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Maintenance · Version 1.0.0 · Reviewed 2026-08-02

Migration Completion Gate Designer

Reduce change risk for task completion contract and migration exit criteria with evidence, explicit trade-offs, and a verification plan.

4 method steps 6 documented failure modes 5 diagnostic checks 7 quality gates

Defines machine-checkable completion markers for migration tasks and the program exit condition. It grounds the decision in task artifacts, build and test commands, parity checks, performance budgets, rollback state, and consumer migration status and explicitly prevents a migration declared complete because code merged while traffic, consumers, cleanup, or rollback evidence remains unresolved.

₹299 one-time

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What this skill helps you do

  • Task completion contract
  • Migration exit criteria
  • Validation marker design

How Migration Completion Gate Designer works

You provide

Current state, consumer inventory, and target state

It inspects

Coexistence and rollback viability for task completion contract

It decides

A migration exit criteria sequence in reversible increments

You verify

Shadow comparison reports divergence rather than assuming zero

What it checks first

Migration Completion Gate Designer defines machine-checkable completion markers for migration tasks and the program exit condition. It grounds the decision in task artifacts, build and test commands, parity checks, performance budgets, rollback state, and consumer migration status and explicitly prevents a migration declared complete because code merged while traffic, consumers, cleanup, or rollback evidence remains unresolved. Use it when the work involves Task completion contract, Migration exit criteria, Validation marker design.

  1. Whether the old and new paths can coexist, which determines if incremental migration is possible at all.
  2. The true consumer inventory, including internal jobs, scripts, and integrations not visible in the main codebase.
  3. Data volume and the time the migration takes at production scale, not sample scale.
  4. Whether the change is backward compatible for data written by the previous version during rollout.
  5. The rollback path, and specifically whether it remains available after the first irreversible step.

Failure modes it recognizes

  • A migration validated on a sample that takes hours on production volume and holds a lock throughout.
  • Dual-write divergence where one write succeeds and the other fails, with no reconciliation.
  • A backfill that races with live writes and overwrites newer values with older ones.
  • Removing the old path before all consumers migrated, discovered by a quarterly batch job weeks later.
  • A schema change that is forward compatible but not backward compatible, blocking rollback.
  • Enum or type widening that older readers cannot parse, breaking during a partial rollout.

Answers it will reject

  • A big-bang cutover with a maintenance window, which concentrates all risk into one unrehearsed moment.
  • Migrating and refactoring simultaneously, which makes failures impossible to attribute.
  • Treating the migration as done at cutover rather than after the old path is removed and verified unused.
  • Skipping the shadow-read comparison because the new implementation "obviously" matches.

Decision rules it applies

  • Use expand-migrate-contract: add the new shape, write both, migrate readers, then remove the old shape.
  • Every increment must be independently verifiable and independently revertible.
  • Keep the old path observable until traffic proves equivalence; remove it only on evidence of zero use.
  • Prefer additive schema changes; a removal is a separate, later, deliberately scheduled change.

Evidence it asks for

  • Run shadow reads comparing old and new outputs, and report the divergence rate rather than assuming zero.
  • Instrument usage of the deprecated path with a caller identifier so removal can be proven safe.
  • Rehearse the migration on a production-sized copy and record the actual duration and lock behavior.

The method inside

  1. Inventory dependencies, compatibility constraints, and current behavior affecting task completion contract.
  2. Create reversible seams for migration exit criteria before changing the critical path.
  3. Sequence validation marker design into independently verifiable increments with explicit rollback points.
  4. Keep old and new paths observable until equivalence is proven; remove the fallback only after acceptance criteria pass.

Deliverables

  • Task completion contract assessment
  • Migration exit criteria decision and action plan
  • Validation marker design verification checklist

Evidence requirements

  • Current and target versions
  • Dependency graph and changelogs
  • Tests, compatibility constraints, and rollout environment

Quality gates

  • Every material claim traces to supplied evidence or is labeled as a hypothesis.
  • The response follows the declared deliverable contract.
  • No execution, access, measurement, or verification is invented.
  • Secrets and personal data are redacted rather than repeated.
  • The user receives a concrete independent verification step.
  • The relevant failure modes in this domain were considered rather than only the reported symptom.
  • No listed anti-pattern was recommended as a solution.

Example task

Input

Apply the migration completion gate designer to our current task completion contract work. We need a concrete decision, bounded changes, and evidence that the result is correct.

Expected output

Start with task artifacts, build and test commands, parity checks, performance budgets, rollback state, and consumer migration status. The highest-risk failure is a migration declared complete because code merged while traffic, consumers, cleanup, or rollback evidence remains unresolved. Completion requires every declared validation group, consumer cutover, and cleanup prerequisite to emit durable evidence. Verify the result by removing one required marker at a time and confirming both task and program completion fail closed.

Boundaries and compatibility

Ideal for

  • Task completion contract: produce a decision or artifact grounded in supplied evidence.
  • Migration exit criteria: produce a decision or artifact grounded in supplied evidence.
  • Validation marker design: produce a decision or artifact grounded in supplied evidence.

Out of scope

  • Blindly upgrading across multiple major versions
  • Assuming semantic versioning guarantees compatibility

Agent compatibility

  • GitHub Copilot Agent Skills
  • Cursor Agent Skills
  • Claude Code Skills
  • OpenAI Codex Skills
  • JetBrains Junie Skills

Tool policy: Advisory by default. No tools are assumed. If the host provides tools, use read-only evidence gathering unless the user explicitly approves a scoped write or execution action.