gstack/docs/proactive.md

Proactive skill suggestions

gstack notices what stage you are in (a new idea, a diff to review, "does this work?", time to land it) and can invoke the matching skill without you typing its slash command. The proactive config key says how far that goes.

Value	What auto-invokes	Who it is for
core (default)	/office-hours, /review, /qa and /ship only. Every other skill waits for you to type it.	Most people, and anyone running gstack beside another skill pack: the four core skills are the ones users praise, and the others no longer compete with another pack's niche skills.
all	Any skill whose purpose matches your request.	You use gstack on its own and want the whole sprint suggested.
off	Nothing. gstack never suggests or auto-invokes a skill, not even by asking "want me to run /X?".	You type every command yourself.

true and false still work as the older spellings of all and off, so a config written before the core default keeps its behavior; gstack-skill-start reports them to the skill as all and off, and it also tolerates a quoted, upper-case or commented hand edit (proactive: "OFF" # mine).

gstack-config get proactive          # core, all, off (or a legacy true/false)
gstack-config set proactive all      # suggest every matching skill
gstack-config set proactive off      # suggest nothing
gstack-config set proactive core     # back to the default

A skill you name is always invoked, whatever the setting. The setting governs unasked suggestions only: a step inside a skill you invoked (/office-hours offering the next review, /ship dispatching /document-release) is part of that skill and still runs; under off, /office-hours recommends the next review in one line instead of offering to launch it, and the one-time first-run tips stay quiet. The change takes effect on the next skill run; no ./setup is needed, because every skill reads PROACTIVE from gstack-skill-start at the start of each run and the router (/gstack) applies it to its routing rules. A value gstack does not know (a hand-edited proactive: maybe) reads as core.

Two surfaces follow the setting only in part. The first is the ## Skill routing section gstack offers to append to your project's CLAUDE.md. Under off the offer is not made, because those rules are the auto-invocation you turned off (a section already in CLAUDE.md stays; delete it yourself). Under core the offered section still lists every routing rule and tells the host to invoke any matching skill. If you accepted it before the core default, trim that section to the four core rules (or delete it and let gstack offer it again); making the offered section follow core is tracked in #3446.

The second is the full skill descriptions, which a --catalog-mode=full build and the non-Claude hosts keep. Non-core skills still say "Proactively suggest when ..." there, and that text does not change with the setting, so a host that picks skills from those descriptions can still reach them under core. The default Claude build uses one-line descriptions without that sentence. #3446 tracks that too.

gstack asks once, after the telemetry question, which of the three you want; if you stored off before that, it takes the answer as given and does not ask. "Say stop suggesting" in a session runs gstack-config set proactive off for you.

If collisions with other skill packs keep coming up under core, the fallback Garry approved on 2026-10-25 is off by default.