Contrarian Setup Gate

Precedence (Summary)

Each step is evaluated in strict pipeline order -- crowding, then news, then price-action -- and each step fully settles before the next step's file is even consulted. An earlier step's definitive verdict is never softened by a later step's problem.

1. Crowding is evaluated first and exclusively: INVALID/INSUFFICIENT crowding is always INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE; a NOT_CONFIRMED (NEUTRAL) classification is always REJECTED, regardless of any downstream file's state or corruption.
2. With crowding CONFIRMED, news is evaluated next, on its own: INVALID (unreadable, malformed, stale, symbol mismatch, direction mismatch, unsupported schema) forces INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE; NOT_CONFIRMED forces REJECTED; INSUFFICIENT forces INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE -- in every one of these cases, price-action is never even inspected for the decision.
3. Once news is CONFIRMED (or PENDING, for out-of-order use), price-action is evaluated last, with the same four-way settlement. Running price-action before news (out-of-order pipeline use) caps the status at CROWDED with a warning -- a NOT_CONFIRMED price-action verdict still REJECTs even out of order, since price-action is still fully evaluated in that branch.
4. Crowding confirmed, both downstream steps pending -> CROWDED.
5. Crowding + news confirmed, price-action pending -> WATCHING_PRICE.
6. All three confirmed -> READY_FOR_PLAN.

See references/gate-decision-table.md for the full decision table (every reachable {crowding} x {news} x {price-action} state combination), the reason-token glossary, and worked examples.

Output Contract

The script writes contrarian_setup_gate_<SYMBOL>_<as-of>.json and .md to --output-dir:

symbol: B6
setup_status: READY_FOR_PLAN | WATCHING_PRICE | CROWDED | REJECTED | INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE
direction: SHORT | LONG | null
gate_confidence: HIGH | MEDIUM | LOW | null
entry_trigger: string | null
invalidation_level: number | null
missing_confirmations: [{step, state, reason}, ...]
warnings: [string, ...]
inputs:
  crowding: {state, classification, data_date, age_days, report_path}
  news_failure: {state, verdict, confidence, verdict_reason, as_of, age_days, report_path}
  price_action: {state, verdict, confidence, verdict_reason, stop_reference, as_of, age_days, report_path}
run_context: {symbol, as_of, max_detector_age_days, max_report_age_days, schema_version, skill}

Every input's state is one of CONFIRMED, NOT_CONFIRMED, INSUFFICIENT, PENDING (report not provided), or INVALID (a report was provided but is unusable -- unreadable, malformed, stale, or inconsistent with the other inputs; always carries a named reason).

Guardrails

1. Never places or recommends orders. READY_FOR_PLAN is the furthest state this skill reaches. Order entry and position sizing are separate, downstream decisions.
2. INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE and REJECTED never advance. No warning, confidence, or partial input ever pushes the status past what the precedence rules allow.
3. Fail closed on every input, always. An unreadable, malformed, stale, symbol-mismatched, or unknown-enum report is never treated as a pass -- it is named and blocks or downgrades the status. This includes the price-action report's verdict_reason (allowlisted against technical-analyst's actual confirming-signal vocabulary, not merely type-checked) and its stop_reference (must be a finite, positive number -- never non-finite, zero, negative, or a boolean). Before any of the three report files reaches this validation, the CLI also rejects a file outright (reason <input>_non_finite) if it contains a non-finite number (Infinity/-Infinity/NaN, including an ordinary-looking number like 1e309 that overflows on parse) ANYWHERE in it, not just in a field the gate reads -- this is what keeps every report a valid, complete JSON file even under adversarial input.
4. READY_FOR_PLAN always carries a usable plan. entry_trigger is guaranteed non-empty and invalidation_level is guaranteed a finite positive number whenever the status is READY_FOR_PLAN -- enforced both by input validation and by a defensive invariant check.
5. Not investment advice. entry_trigger and invalidation_level are factual echoes of the upstream price-action report, not recommendations.

Resources

• scripts/run_contrarian_setup_gate.py -- CLI: hardened JSON loading (unreadable / parse_error incl. RecursionError / non_finite via an iterative whole-file scan), report generation
• scripts/gate_logic.py -- Pure synthesis core: normalization (incl. malformed-shape detection), consistency checks, the precedence state machine
• references/gate-decision-table.md -- Full decision table, reason-token glossary, worked examples (including the real B6 REJECTED case)