Sentrux Quality Gates: Closing the Feedback Loop on AI-Generated Code

AI agents write code faster than humans can review it. A single session might touch 50 files, introduce new dependencies, and refactor core modules — all in minutes. Without structural governance, codebases decay at machine speed.

Today we are announcing Sentrux quality gates, now integrated across all Terraphim projects.

The Problem: Code Quality at Machine Speed

The failure modes are predictable:

• Tangled dependencies — Modules that started clean become spaghetti
• God files — Single files accumulate 36+ dependencies
• Complexity creep — Functions grow to 254+ cyclomatic complexity
• Silent degradation — Quality drops 500 points before anyone notices

Traditional CI catches syntax errors and test failures, but it does not catch architectural degradation. That is where Sentrux comes in.

Meet Sentrux

Sentrux is a Rust-based structural quality sensor that watches your codebase in real-time. It computes a quality signal (0-10000) from 5 root cause metrics:

Metric	What It Catches
Modularity	God files, tight coupling, hotspots
Acyclicity	Circular dependencies
Depth	Deep dependency chains
Equality	Complexity concentration (Gini coefficient)
Redundancy	Dead code, duplicates

Unlike linters that check style, Sentrux checks structure. It answers: “Does this change fit the system? Will this abstraction cause problems as the codebase grows?”

Integration at Three Levels

1. CI Quality Gates

Every PR runs a quality check:

# .github/workflows/sentrux-quality-gate.yml
- name: Run Sentrux Check
  run: sentrux check .

- name: Check Delta
  run: |
    if [ $DELTA -lt -100 ]; then
      echo "Quality degraded! Blocking merge."
      exit 1
    fi

Automatic baseline comparison. PR comments with quality reports. Merge blocking on degradation. Per-project rules via .sentrux/rules.toml.

2. Agent Integration

The ADF build-runner now measures quality before and after builds:

# Before: quality = 7342
sentrux check .

# Build and test
cargo test

# After: quality = 6891 (degraded!)
sentrux check .

Build status now includes the quality signal: fmt+clippy+test pass | quality: 5241

3. MCP Server

Agents query Sentrux directly via MCP:

Agent: scan("/path/to/project")
  -> { quality_signal: 7342, bottleneck: "modularity" }

Agent: session_start()
  -> { status: "Baseline saved" }

... writes code ...

Agent: session_end()
  -> { pass: false,
      signal_before: 7342,
      signal_after: 6891,
      summary: "Quality degraded" }

Real Results

After scanning our own projects:

Project	Quality	Key Finding
gitea-robot	8648	Clean Go codebase, minimal issues
terraphim-ai	5241	1 god file (orchestrator/src/lib.rs, fan-out=36)
gitea	3847	Large upstream fork with accumulated debt
atomic-server	3271	Needs attention

The terraphim-ai god file is already on our refactoring roadmap. Without Sentrux, we might not have quantified the impact so clearly.

This connects directly to the AI Dark Factory deployment — without quality gates, autonomous agents would degrade the codebase faster than humans can intervene.

Rules Engine

Each project defines architectural constraints in .sentrux/rules.toml:

[constraints]
max_cycles = 5          # No more than 5 circular deps
max_cc = 30             # Functions max 30 complexity
max_file_lines = 500    # Files max 500 lines
no_god_files = true     # No files with >15 dependencies

[[layers]]
name = "core"
paths = ["src/core/*"]
order = 0

[[boundaries]]
from = "src/app/*"
to = "src/core/internal/*"
reason = "App must not depend on core internals"

Rules are checked on every PR. Violations block merge.

Why This Matters

AI agents are powerful but limited. They cannot hold the big picture and small details simultaneously. Sentrux gives them the sensor they need to:

1. See structure — Understand the codebase architecture
2. Measure impact — Quantify the effect of each change
3. Self-correct — Iterate when quality drops

This is the missing feedback loop. Compilers check syntax. Tests check behaviour. Linters check style. Sentrux checks architecture.

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Sentrux quality gates are now active on all Terraphim projects. PR checks include structural quality reports.