# What Is PR Gating?

## Definition

Pull-request gating prevents a change from merging until required conditions, such as a successful CI workflow, are met.

## Why it matters

A gate helps only when it represents current results for the proposed change and the team can act on a failure. A comment is useful context, but it does not itself enforce repository policy.

## How teams handle it today

Teams choose reliable blocking tests and require their workflow through branch protection. Nonblocking tests can remain visible while the team evaluates their usefulness.

## How Zerocheck approaches it

Zerocheck’s CLI exits non-zero for a blocking failure. A YAML test can set blocks_merge to false to keep a failure visible without blocking. GitHub Actions reporting updates one PR comment; configure GitHub branch protection to require the workflow.

Related terms: [Flaky Test](https://tryzerocheck.com/glossary/flaky-test/), [Test Flakiness](https://tryzerocheck.com/glossary/test-flakiness/), [E2E Testing](https://tryzerocheck.com/glossary/e2e-testing/)


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Canonical: https://tryzerocheck.com/glossary/pr-gating/
Updated: 2026-09-14