Exit Behavior

DiffPal uses process exit status to distinguish completed review, blocked review, setup problems, provider problems, publishing problems, and internal tooling failures.

Code	Meaning
0	Command completed successfully. Review may still contain findings when gate is disabled.
2	Configuration, profile, provider validation, CLI flag, platform auth, or diff context/setup failure.
3	Transient provider failure such as provider timeout or retryable provider error.
4	Publishing or conversion failure, including platform API publishing and SARIF conversion.
5	Internal tooling or local file/output failure.
10	Blocking findings detected and --gate was enabled.
130	Interrupted or cancelled by the process environment.

Success

Without --gate, a review command returns 0 when review, artifact writing, and any requested publishing complete. Findings can still be present and can still be marked blocking in artifacts and summaries.

Blocking Findings

With --gate, DiffPal counts findings whose severity meets diffpal.gate.block_on or --block-on. If any are blocking, the command returns exit code 10 after review output is written and publishing has been attempted.

Setup Failure

Exit code 2 covers invalid config, missing config, invalid feedback mode, invalid review channel, invalid instructions file, missing platform token, and missing host context such as base/head/repository metadata.

Review scope resolution failures are setup/context failures and also return 2.

Provider Failure

Provider validation failures return 2. Transient provider runtime failures return 3. Other provider/runtime failures return 5.

Publishing Failure

Host publishing failures return 4. This includes platform API failures and publishing file conversion errors. The diffpal sarif command also returns 4 for failed input reading, SARIF conversion, or SARIF output writing.

Behavior With And Without Gating

Gate enabled	Blocking findings exist	Exit code	Feedback/artifacts
no	no	0	written/published
no	yes	0	written/published, may report blocking status in output
yes	no	0	written/published
yes	yes	10	written/published before the gate error

Tooling failures return their failure code regardless of gate setting because the review result is incomplete.