Trust levels · Warpway

Observe, Assist, Gate, Clear and Auto-approve: what each level allows and who can change it.

Trust levels control how much Warpway may do in a repository, from only reporting to approving pull requests on its own. Raise them gradually as Warpway proves itself on your code; every repository shows its level in the dashboard.

The five levels

Level	Name	Warpway reviews	Routes human tasks	The check	Approves pull requests
0	Observe	Yes	No	Always `neutral`	No
1	Assist	Yes	Yes, in GitHub and Slack	Always `neutral`	No
2	Gate	Yes	Yes	Blocks until your policy is satisfied	No
3	Clear	Yes	Yes	Blocks until your policy is satisfied	No
4	Auto-approve	Yes	Yes	Blocks until your policy is satisfied	Only when every deterministic condition passes

New repositories start at the organization's default level, which is Assist unless an Owner changes it.

0 · Observe

Warpway runs every review and shows the results in the check and the summary comment, but asks nobody anything and never blocks. Use it to see what Warpway would do before it involves anyone.

1 · Assist

Human tasks are created and routed: engineers through GitHub, other experts through Slack on plans that include it. The finished check reports the results as neutral, which GitHub treats as passing, so it never blocks a merge.

2 · Gate

The Warpway / Review check concludes success only when your review policy is satisfied. Make it a required check in branch protection to block merges until then. See Merge gating.

3 · Clear

Lenses that allow AI clearance can be cleared by Warpway, so reviewers spend their time only on what is unresolved. Required lenses with AI clearance turned off get a sign-off task instead; lenses with human sign-off set to always need one at every level. Final approval in GitHub stays with a person.

4 · Auto-approve

Warpway may submit an APPROVE review, but only if an Owner allowed auto-approval for the organization and explicitly enabled it for the repository, and every deterministic eligibility condition passes for the exact head commit. It is off by default. See Auto-approval.

The effective level

The level Warpway uses for a review is the lowest of:

the level set for the repository in the dashboard;
trust_level in the organization's settings, the repository's settings or the base branch's .warpway.yml, where set;
the highest level your plan allows: Assist on Free, Auto-approve on Team.

Configuration can lower autonomy but never raise it. A trust_level in organization settings caps every repository, and an Owner can lock it so that neither repository settings nor .warpway.yml can change it. For example, a repository set to Gate in the dashboard whose .warpway.yml says trust_level: 1 is reviewed at Assist; the same repository on the Free plan is also reviewed at Assist.

.warpway.yml

version: 1
trust_level: 1

Who can change it

Change	Who
Lower a repository's level	Admin or Owner
Raise a repository to Assist or Gate	Admin or Owner, with a confirmation (Gate needs the Team plan)
Raise a repository to Clear or Auto-approve	Owner only, with an explicit confirmation
Enable auto-approval for a repository	Owner only, with an explicit confirmation
Lock `trust_level` for all repositories	Owner

Every change is recorded in the audit log with who made it and when.

A sensible progression

Observe or Assist for the first week or two: read the summaries and see which questions Warpway asks and who it asks.
Gate once the results match your team's judgment: make Warpway / Review required.
Clear for repositories where the cleared lenses have proven reliable for your code.
Auto-approve only for narrow, low-risk classes of change, such as documentation and test-only pull requests or small Dependabot updates.