Hi,
Quality Gates use Measures, so what you’re really after is the difference between Rules and Measures. Generally (there are some grandfathered exceptions) Measure-related Rules (i.e. a rule with a threshold parameter) act at the method level and below. Measures that you can see outside of Issues (i.e. in the Measures page) are file-level and above.
When you set a Quality Gate parameter on Cognitive Complexity, you said that for the entire project, there should only be a total - across all methods and files - of 15 Cognitive Complexity points. And the same for Cyclomatic Complexity (although with a different numeric value).
BTW, there is a rule for Cyclomatic Complexity. It’s called something like (depending on the language) “Functions should not be too complex”. It was written and implemented before we invented Cognitive Complexity - before there was a need to differentiate.
IIWY, I’d simply drop those Quality Gate conditions. Your rules will flag all the methods that need work.
HTH,
Ann