Status: wired into plugins (this repo) 2026-09-11 — the first of 13 nself-org repos to adopt it. Zero repos had it wired before this, including plugins itself, which owns the source at free/ci.

This guide is the copy-paste pattern for the other 12 repos. It also records, honestly, what the gate does and does not check today — read "Known gaps" before requiring it as a sole merge gate.

• It owns the nself-ci source (free/ci/) and the wrapper (scripts/nself-ci.sh) — self-hosting the gate here is the purest dogfood: a regression in the gate breaks its own repo's checks first.
• It is public, so the workflow runs on free GitHub-hosted Actions — no runner-fleet dependency to prove the pattern.
• Its own .claude/docs/CI-LOCAL.md (project-level) already documents the branch-protection recipe; this guide is the repo-level companion showing the wiring actually in place.

1. Workflow — .github/workflows/nself-ci.yml: checkout → setup-go (builds the binary) → setup-node/pnpm (for the Node gate path) → install gitleaks → run scripts/nself-ci.sh . with permissions: statuses: write and GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }} so gh api can post the status without a PAT.
2. Wrapper — scripts/nself-ci.sh builds free/ci/nself-ci if missing/stale, then execs it. Same script works locally and in CI.
3. Status — the binary posts a nself-ci commit status via gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/statuses/{sha} (OAuth, no token in a URL).
4. Branch protection (NOT applied by this PR — owner's call) — add nself-ci to required_status_checks.contexts per the exact gh api command in ~/Sites/nself/.claude/docs/CI-LOCAL.md § "Requiring nself-ci in branch protection". Do this as an additional required check alongside the repo's existing checks, not a replacement — see gaps below.

Copy .github/workflows/nself-ci.yml from this repo into each of the other 12 (cli, admin, web, nchat, nclaw, nsentry, ntask, nfamily, clawde, homebrew-nself, packages, plugins-pro), adjusting the toolchain setup steps to match that repo's stack (e.g. Flutter repos need subosito/flutter-action instead of setup-node).

$ scripts/nself-ci.sh --check -v .
[nself-ci] building gate binary...
[nself-ci] built .../free/ci/nself-ci
[nself-ci] running: gitleaks detect --source . --exit-code 1 --config .github/gitleaks.toml

nself-ci gate results — .
Stacks: node
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  secrets:gitleaks                PASS  (3.617s)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Overall: PASSED  (4s)

That is the real, complete output — one gate ran (secrets:gitleaks), it passed, in under 4 seconds. Read that literally: no lint, typecheck, test, or build gate ran, for the reason below.

1. This repo's Node gate is a no-op. nself-ci detects Node stacks by checking the root package.json for lint / typecheck / test / build scripts (or workspace members' scripts, if pnpm-workspace.yaml exists). This repo's root package.json has neither: it has one custom script, ci:local (a stub — tsc --noEmit --allowJs || echo skip; echo passed), and no pnpm-workspace.yaml, even though shared/ has its own package.json. Result: the workspace-recursion path in free/ci/internal/legacy/gate_runners.go (runNodeGates) never triggers, the non-workspace path finds no matching scripts, and the gate silently runs nothing but the secret scan — while still printing Overall: PASSED. This is exactly the shape of failure flagged in .claude/memory/lesson_hollow_ci_gates.md: a gate that passes while checking nothing.

• Fix options (not applied by this PR): (a) add real lint/typecheck/test/build scripts to root package.json (or add pnpm-workspace.yaml so member scripts are picked up), or (b) extend gate_runners.go to also recognize this repo's ci:local convention. Until one of these lands, nself-ci on this repo is a secrets-only gate, not a lint/test/build gate.

2. No per-plugin checks. The real quality bar for this repo is per-plugin (schema validation, duplicate-port checks, registry consistency — see validate.yml, registry-check.yml, hygiene.yml, license-gate.yml). nself-ci only inspects the repo root; it does not walk free/*/plugin.json or run plugin-level TypeScript builds. It does not replace any of those workflows.
3. No lint/typecheck/test/build for Go-only subpackages either. free/ci itself (and other Go-based plugins) has a go.mod, but stack detection only looks at the repo root, which has no root go.mod. A regression inside free/ci's own Go code would not be caught by nself-ci running against repo root — only by its own go test ./... if invoked directly in that subdirectory, or by build-test.yml.
4. Per the plugin's own README ("What it explicitly does NOT do"): nself ci is not a GitHub Actions emulator. E2E, Lighthouse, axe-a11y, CodeQL, Trivy, SBOM, license audit, coverage ratchet, bundle-size, commitlint, i18n-check, and deploy jobs all still need to run somewhere else — free-runner Actions for public repos (this repo), or a dedicated additional gate for private ones.
5. Fork PRs: GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }} on a fork PR is read-only for status writes; the binary treats a failed status post as a warning (non-fatal), so the job's pass/fail still reflects the real gate result, but the nself-ci check may not appear on fork PRs.

Bottom line: this PR adds nself-ci as evidence the wiring works end-to-end (workflow → build → gates → status), not as proof the gate is a complete substitute for this repo's existing checks. Recommend requiring it in branch protection in addition to, not instead of, validate.yml / build-test.yml / gitleaks.yml / registry-check.yml until gap 1 is closed.

• Copy .github/workflows/nself-ci.yml, adjust toolchain setup for the repo's stack.
• Run scripts/nself-ci.sh --check -v . (or plugins/free/ci/nself-ci directly) locally first — confirm which stacks it detects and which gates actually execute. Do not assume; read the printed gate table.
• If the repo's real lint/typecheck/test/build live under a non-standard script name (as ci:local does here) or in workspace members without pnpm-workspace.yaml, fix that before treating a green nself-ci as meaningful.
• Open a PR, let Actions run it once, confirm the nself-ci commit status appears on the PR.
• Propose (do not silently apply) the branch-protection addition per CI-LOCAL.md — owner approves it.