What Are Quality Gates in CI/CD? A quality gate is a rule that must pass for the pipeline to move to the next stage. Simple definition. Powerful concept. If the gate fails — the pipeline fails. No exceptions. No "we'll fix it later." That discipline is exactly what keeps bugs out of production. Common Quality Gates Here are the most widely used gates in real DevOps pipelines: ✅ Unit test pass rate — 100% ✅ Code coverage — at least 70% ✅ Static analysis — 0 critical issues ✅ Security scan — no high severity CVEs ✅ Smoke test — all must pass ✅ Performance — response time must be under target (p99 threshold) Each of these is a hard stop. The pipeline does not move forward until every gate passes. The Rule to Remember in Interviews A warning nobody reads is not a gate. This is the most important thing to say when asked about quality gates in an interview. If your pipeline warns but still deploys — that is not a gate. That is noise. A real gate blocks the pipeline.…