Approvegate

Approvegate is a deploy-approval check for GitHub Actions and GitLab CI pipelines. A production release proceeds only once the change has been approved, and the approval is recorded against the commit or build artifact. The maker presented it on Hacker News on 3 October 2026.

Features

• Commit-bound approvals: checks that the approved commit is the one being deployed.
• Separation of duties: requires someone other than the requester to approve a production release.
• Freeze windows: pauses releases during incidents, maintenance or sensitive periods.
• Policy as code and shadow mode: policies written as code, and a shadow mode that records what would have been blocked without stopping any deploy.

Customers and markets

It is aimed at teams that already run a release-approval process and want it enforced, and that need change-management evidence for audits.

Key facts

• Evidence formats: JSON, PDF and CSV exports
• Tiers: a one-service tier, a Team plan for up to ten services and an enterprise tier
• Self-hosting: available on the enterprise tier