# Quality Criteria Registry

`acceptance-quality-criteria.v1.json` is the active reviewable criteria registry
for candidate characteristics. It defines criteria that deterministic gates may
use to reject, downgrade, invalidate, flag, merge, or require review.

The registry is intentionally not an approval policy. Approval belongs to human
reviewers or trusted agentic reviewers that inspect evidence and record a
rationale.

List the active registry from the CLI:

```bash
repo-scoping list-quality-criteria --format markdown
```

The same registry is available from the API at `GET /quality-criteria`.

The first deterministic gate evaluator emits audit outcomes against this
registry. Candidate graph API responses and self-scoping assessment exports
include those outcomes as `quality_gate_outcomes`. Gate outcomes can block or
flag review, but they never approve candidates.