porch verify --skip bypasses the verify-approval gate — protocol completes with the gate still 'pending' and never requested

[waleedkadous]

Problem

Recording a skipped verification via porch verify <id> --skip "reason" then porch done advances the SPIR protocol straight to complete (verified) WITHOUT ever firing the verify-approval gate:

status.yaml gates.verify-approval : still 'pending'
porch gate <id>                   : 'No gate required for this phase'
porch pending                     : project absent
porch next                        : {"status": "complete", "phase": "verified"}

So the human-approval checkpoint that the gate represents is silently skipped along with the verification step, and nothing offers it to a human. If the final sign-off matters as a recorded artifact, an operator must know to run porch approve <id> verify-approval unprompted — porch will not ask, and the protocol already reports complete.

A skip of the verification WORK is a legitimate branch (that's what --skip is for); skipping the human APPROVAL of that decision as a side effect conflates two different checkpoints.

Observed: cluesmith/shannon project 3358, 2026-07-27. Caught because the builder refused to treat 'porch says complete' as equivalent to 'the owner's sign-off happened' and reported the pending-but-unrequested gate rather than letting it pass.