A Gate is a condition a job or step has to satisfy before it's allowed to run or keep running -- think of a real gate: closed, nothing gets through; open, it does. A file showing up, CPU/memory/runtime crossing a threshold, or another job's status are just different things a gate checks to decide whether it's currently open or closed. What happens at that gate depends on how it's set up: a file showing up can open a gate that starts a brand-new run; CPU crossing your threshold can close a gate that pauses or stops a run already in progress. The consequence changes -- start, pause, or stop -- but the gate itself works the same way every time: it's either open right now, or it isn't.

Create one under Admin -> Gates, attach it from a job's Gates button or a step's own gate icon. Each gate is Pause (parks the run) or Stop (ends it).

For a normal (Continue-scope) gate -- one pausing or stopping a job/step already running -- a gate attached to a step checks once after that step; a gate attached to a job checks after every top-level step.

Not the same as a Job Trigger: a Job-Status gate can only ever pause or stop a job/step that's already running -- it has no way to start a new one. A Job Trigger is the only thing that starts a new run of a different job once one job finishes.

The one exception is a Start-scope File Exists gate, attached at the whole-job level -- it isn't checked at a step boundary at all. Worker polls every job with no run currently in flight roughly every 2 seconds, and the moment the watched file shows up, it creates a brand-new run right then. See File-Watch Gates. This Start option only exists for File Exists gates attached at the job level -- every other condition type, and every step-level attach, is Continue-scope only.

See gates.md for the full technical story.

Related: Job Triggers -- starts a new job off another job's outcome, the thing a gate cannot do. Schedules -- starts a job on a recurring day/time pattern instead of a condition. File-Watch Gates -- the Start-scope case in depth. Gate Pause/Stop History -- every job a gate has paused or stopped, and for how long.

See also: Glossary for related terms.