Artifacts

Workflow steps produce artifacts that populate the Push Request. There are three types of artifacts, each created with a dedicated CLI command.

Artifact Types

Content

Content artifacts add rich text to the Push Request overview — typically a generated PR title and description.

airlock artifact content --title "Add user authentication" --body "Implements OAuth2 login flow with..."

Comment

Comment artifacts attach inline review comments to specific files and lines in the Changes tab.

airlock artifact comment \
  --file src/auth.ts \
  --line 42 \
  --message "Consider using a constant for the token expiry" \
  --severity warning

Patch

Patch artifacts suggest code changes that appear in the Patches tab for review.

airlock artifact patch \
  --title "Fix import ordering" \
  --explanation "Sorted imports alphabetically per project convention"

Patch artifacts capture the current worktree diff as the patch content. Pre-freeze patches are applied automatically; post-freeze patches are queued for manual review.

See the CLI Reference for full flag details on each command.

How Artifacts Populate the Push Request

Artifact Type	Desktop App Tab
Content	Overview — Title and description
Comment	Changes — Inline comments on the diff
Patch	Patches — Suggested changes to accept or reject

Producing Artifacts in Custom Steps

Any workflow step can produce artifacts by calling the airlock artifact commands. For example, a custom linting step might produce both patches (auto-fixes) and comments (warnings):

- name: custom-lint
  run: |
    # Run linter and apply fixes
    eslint --fix src/
    airlock artifact patch --title "ESLint auto-fixes" --explanation "Applied ESLint auto-fix rules"

    # Add a comment for manual-fix issues
    airlock artifact comment --file src/index.ts --line 10 \
      --message "Unused variable 'foo'" --severity warning

Step Result Artifacts

Some default steps write JSON result files to $AIRLOCK_ARTIFACTS/ that downstream steps can read:

`test_result.json`

Written by the test step:

{
  "verdict": "pass",
  "summary": "All 42 tests passed",
  "details": "..."
}

Field	Values	Description
`verdict`	`pass`, `fail`, or `skip`	Overall test outcome
`summary`	string	Brief summary of the test run

`critique_result.json`

Written by the critique step:

{
  "max_severity": "warning",
  "comment_count": 3,
  "summary": "Found 2 warnings and 1 info suggestion"
}

Field	Values	Description
`max_severity`	`none`, `info`, `warning`, or `error`	Highest severity across comments
`comment_count`	number	Total number of review comments

`risk_assessment.json`

Written by the gate step:

{
  "risk_level": "medium",
  "summary": "Change modifies core auth logic with partial test coverage",
  "rationale": "The change touches authentication middleware...",
  "system_impact": "moderate",
  "ambiguity": "medium",
  "approval_threshold": "medium",
  "await_human_approval": "true",
  "test_verdict": "pass",
  "critique_max_severity": "warning",
  "critique_comment_count": 3
}

Field	Values	Description
`risk_level`	`low`, `medium`, or `high`	Assessed risk level of the change
`summary`	string	Brief summary of the risk assessment
`rationale`	string	Explanation of why this risk level was chosen
`system_impact`	`cosmetic`, `moderate`, `fundamental`	Scope of the change's impact on the system
`ambiguity`	`low`, `medium`, or `high`	Level of implementation ambiguity
`approval_threshold`	string	Configured `AIRLOCK_RISK_THRESHOLD` value
`await_human_approval`	`"true"` or `"false"`	Whether the gate paused for approval
`test_verdict`	`pass`, `fail`, or `skip`	Test verdict from upstream step
`critique_max_severity`	`none`, `info`, `warning`, `error`	Highest critique severity
`critique_comment_count`	number	Number of critique comments

These artifacts are used by the gate step to perform a risk assessment and conditionally pause the pipeline with airlock exec await.

Push Requests — How artifacts appear in the Push Request UI
Custom Steps — Writing steps that produce artifacts

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