Contrarian Setup Gate skill

Contrarian Setup Gate

Overview

Synthesize the outputs of Jason Shapiro's 3-step contrarian process into one actionable state. cot-contrarian-detector (step 1) flags crowded positioning, news-reaction-failure-analyzer (step 2) tests whether the market failed to react to news favorable to the crowd, and technical-analyst's contrarian-confirmation mode (step 3) confirms weekly price-action evidence of a reversal. This gate reads those three report JSONs and applies an explicit, exhaustively-tested precedence rule set to produce one setup_status, with a fail-closed reason attached to every input that could not be confirmed.

The gate does no fetching, no API calls, and no computation beyond validating and combining the three inputs it is given. It is the pipeline's synthesis center, not a data source.

When to Use

• After running cot-contrarian-detector (always required -- this is the pipeline's entry point)
• Mid-pipeline, with only the detector report, to see the CROWDED state and what steps remain
• After running news-reaction-failure-analyzer, to see whether the setup advances to WATCHING_PRICE or is REJECTED
• After running technical-analyst's contrarian-confirmation mode, to see whether the setup reaches READY_FOR_PLAN
• Before handing a symbol's direction and stop level to a position-sizing skill

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+
• No API keys -- this skill is fully offline
• A cot-contrarian-detector JSON report for the symbol under evaluation (required)
• Optionally, a news-reaction-failure-analyzer JSON report for the same symbol (step 2)
• Optionally, a technical-analyst contrarian-confirmation JSON report for the same symbol (step 3)

Validate run_context.data_date and every supplied vintage for the selected market: markets[].data_date and data_provenance.market_data_dates[symbol]. Each must be nonempty, parseable, not after --as-of, and no older than --max-detector-age-days (the boundary itself is accepted). Use the oldest validated date for the audit age; keep the original run context unchanged. Legacy reports may omit row/map dates and fall back to the report date. A present invalid/null/empty date or malformed provenance/map container fails closed using the existing missing/invalid/future/stale reason codes. Other symbols' row/map dates do not replace the selected market's vintage. Existing first-10-character date parsing remains compatible; this is not a stricter full-timestamp or provenance-schema validator.

Workflow

Step 1: Run the Gate

python3 skills/contrarian-setup-gate/scripts/run_contrarian_setup_gate.py \
  --symbol B6 \
  --detector-json reports/cot_crowding_2026-07-12.json \
  --news-json reports/nrf_B6_2026-07-12.json \
  --price-action-json reports/ta_confirmation_B6_2026-07-12.json \
  --as-of 2026-07-15 \
  --output-dir reports/

--symbol and --detector-json are required; --news-json and --price-action-json are optional -- omit either to see the state at that pipeline stage. --as-of is required (no implicit "today"): staleness is always evaluated against an explicit reference date so reruns are deterministic.

Exit behavior is intentionally asymmetric: a missing or malformed --as-of (or any other CLI usage error) is an operator config mistake, so the CLI exits 2 with usage text and writes no report. A problem with one of the three untrusted report files -- unreadable, malformed, stale, inconsistent -- is always handled fail-closed instead: the CLI exits 0 and writes a report naming the reason, exactly like every other skill in this pipeline.

Step 2: Read the Setup Status

Status	Meaning	Next Step
READY_FOR_PLAN	All three steps confirmed; direction, entry_trigger, and invalidation_level are populated	Hand direction and invalidation_level to a position-sizing skill
WATCHING_PRICE	Crowding + news confirmed; price action still pending	Run technical-analyst's contrarian-confirmation mode
CROWDED	Crowding confirmed; news and/or price still pending	Run news-reaction-failure-analyzer
REJECTED	Crowding is NOT_CONFIRMED (classification NEUTRAL), or news/price came back NOT_CONFIRMED	Stop -- do not run further steps for this symbol/direction
INSUFFICIENT_EVIDENCE	A required input is missing, unreadable, stale, inconsistent, or could not itself reach a verdict	Stop -- fix or regenerate the named input before rerunning

missing_confirmations lists every step still blocking, with its state and reason. warnings never change the status -- they flag audit-worthy conditions such as a MEDIUM-confidence confirming signal or a near-stale input.

Step 3: Act on READY_FOR_PLAN Only

At READY_FOR_PLAN, direction (SHORT/LONG, the fade side of the crowd), entry_trigger (a factual echo of the confirming weekly signal), and invalidation_level (the stop reference from the price-action report) are populated. gate_confidence is the weaker of the news and price-action confidences (HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW -- LOW is a token both upstream skills document as reserved but never actually emit; the gate accepts it and ranks it weakest rather than rejecting it as unknown). Position sizing is the next pipeline stage (not yet built as of this skill's release -- see the roadmap in the repository's workflow docs); this gate never places or recommends an order.

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)