Continuous Integration and Quality Gates: Keeping Main Shippable

Continuous integration is not automatic packaging. It lets teams merge changes frequently and automatically verify whether main is still shippable.

Quality Gate Pipeline

flowchart LR
    A["Commit / PR"] --> B["Install dependencies"]
    B --> C["Lint / Type check"]
    C --> D["Unit tests"]
    D --> E["Build"]
    E --> F["Security / Artifact"]
    F --> G["Merge / Release candidate"]

Engineering Scenario

When many people work in parallel, a broken main branch spreads cost to everyone. Quality gates turn team agreements into executable rules.

Best Practices

• Fail fast.
• Treat broken main as the highest priority.
• Keep gates few but meaningful.
• Link artifacts to commits and versions.