gstack

gstack turns Claude Code (and other coding agents) into a virtual engineering team: a CEO who rethinks the product, an eng manager who locks architecture, a designer who catches AI slop, a reviewer who finds production bugs, a QA lead who opens a real browser, a security officer who runs OWASP + STRIDE audits, and a release engineer who ships the PR. All slash commands, all Markdown, all free, MIT license.

I'm Garry Tan, President & CEO of Y Combinator. This is the open source software factory I use every day, and I'm sharing it because these tools should be available to everyone. The story, the productivity numbers and how I run ten sprints at once are in Why gstack.

Fork it. Improve it. Make it yours. And if you want to hate on free open source software — you're welcome to, but I'd rather you just try it first.

Who this is for:

• Founders and CEOs — especially technical ones who still want to ship
• First-time Claude Code users — structured roles instead of a blank prompt
• Tech leads and staff engineers — rigorous review, QA, and release automation on every PR

Quick start

1. Install gstack (two pastes, about 30 seconds of setup; see below).
2. Run /office-hours and describe what you're building. It pushes back on your framing and writes a design doc the other skills read.
3. Run /review on any branch with changes. It finds the bugs that pass CI but break in production, and fixes the obvious ones.
4. Run /qa on your staging URL, or on an isolated local API, CLI, job or webhook. It opens a real browser, reproduces bugs and fixes them.

Stop there. You'll know if this is for you. When you want the whole sprint, /autoplan reviews a plan end to end and /ship runs tests, review and the PR.

Install — about 30 seconds

Requirements: Claude Code, Git, Bun v1.4.2+ (the tested version; setup refuses Bun older than 1.3.3, which would let compiled tools read a project's .env), and Node.js on Windows. Recommended on macOS: the Aside browser (macOS 15+), which the browser skills, /make-pdf and /diagram drive first with your real logged-in sessions; without it, ./setup builds gstack's own bundled browser. /cso needs a native toolchain as well; setup says so and leaves it unavailable when the toolchain is absent. Timing, the /cso prerequisites and the hooks setup registers: docs/install.md.

Step 1: Install on your machine

Open Claude Code and paste this. Claude does the rest.

Install gstack: run git clone --single-branch --depth 1 https://github.com/garrytan/gstack.git ~/.claude/skills/gstack && cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setup then add a "gstack" section to CLAUDE.md that says to use the /browse skill from gstack for all web browsing and never use mcp__claude-in-chrome__* tools. Claude Code lists the installed skills itself, so the section needs no skill list. Then ask the user if they also want to add gstack to the current project so teammates get it.

Step 2: Team mode — auto-update for shared repos (recommended)

From inside your repo, paste this. Switches you to team mode, bootstraps the repo so teammates get gstack automatically, and commits the change:

(cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setup --team) && ~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-team-init required && git add .claude/ CLAUDE.md && git commit -m "require gstack for AI-assisted work"

No vendored files in your repo, no version drift, no manual upgrades. Every Claude Code session starts with a fast auto-update check (throttled to once/hour, network-failure-safe, completely silent). Team mode follows the stable channel: the weekly tagged release (Monday mornings, plus off-cycle hotfixes), not every merge to main. gstack-config set update_channel main follows every merge instead; see docs/releases.md.

Swap required for optional if you'd rather nudge teammates than block them.

Team mode's required hook runs on Node.js, so every teammate needs Node.js on PATH (details). To remove gstack later: docs/uninstall.md.

Other AI Agents

gstack runs on more agents than Claude. Bare ./setup installs for Claude Code only. Pick another agent with --host <name>, or install for every agent setup detects on this machine with --host auto:

git clone --single-branch --depth 1 https://github.com/garrytan/gstack.git ~/gstack
cd ~/gstack && ./setup --host auto      # or: ./setup --host codex
./setup --status                         # one row per install: host, tier, scope, version, path

An explicit --host X installs for X only and never changes another agent's install. /gstack-upgrade refreshes every install it registered, one row per host, and says which ones failed.

Tiers: full is certified by a real workflow run (see Certify your host); experimental installs and passes the conformance tests but has no certification run yet; instruction-only installs nothing: setup prints what to copy.

Agent	Tier	Install	First invocation	Safety skills	Outside review needs	Repair
Claude Code	full	--host claude (default)	/office-hours	enforced (hooks block)	Codex CLI, signed in	./setup --host claude
OpenAI Codex CLI	experimental	--host codex → ${CODEX_HOME:-~/.codex}/skills/gstack-*/	ask for gstack-office-hours	advisory, not blocked	Claude Code CLI, signed in	./setup --host codex
OpenCode	experimental	--host opencode → ~/.config/opencode/skills/gstack-*/ + /gstack-* commands	/gstack-office-hours	advisory, not blocked	Codex CLI, signed in	./setup --host opencode
Cursor	experimental	--host cursor → ~/.cursor/skills/gstack-*/	ask for gstack-office-hours	advisory, not blocked	Codex CLI, signed in	./setup --host cursor
Factory Droid	experimental	--host factory → ~/.factory/skills/gstack-*/	ask for gstack-office-hours	advisory, not blocked	Codex CLI, signed in	./setup --host factory
Kiro	experimental	--host kiro → ~/.kiro/skills/gstack-*/	ask for gstack-office-hours	advisory, not blocked	Codex CLI, signed in	./setup --host kiro
GitHub Copilot CLI	experimental	--host copilot → ~/.copilot/skills/gstack-*/	/gstack-office-hours	advisory, not blocked	Codex CLI, signed in	./setup --host copilot
Antigravity CLI	experimental	--host agy (or --host antigravity) → ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/skills/gstack-*/	/gstack-office-hours	advisory, not blocked	Codex CLI, signed in	./setup --host agy
Slate	instruction-only	--host slate (points at the Claude install; Slate reads .claude/skills)	/office-hours via the Claude install	advisory, not blocked	—	./setup --host claude
OpenClaw	instruction-only	--host openclaw (prints the digest path; ACP spawns Claude Code — docs/OPENCLAW.md)	"Load gstack. Run /review"	advisory, not blocked	—	re-copy the digest after upgrades
Hermes	instruction-only	--host hermes (prints the digest path and gen:skill-docs --host hermes)	copy the digest, or render skills yourself	advisory, not blocked	—	re-copy the digest after upgrades
GBrain (mod)	instruction-only	--host gbrain (brain-aware variants ship from the GBrain repo)	—	advisory, not blocked	—	—

Per-host notes (Copilot, Antigravity, OpenClaw and ClawHub, the Codex behavioral profile and model tiers, outside-review providers, the design binary's models) are in docs/hosts.md. Any rules-reading agent (Zed, Amp, Jules) can use the 2KB agents digest with no install. Adding a host: docs/ADDING_A_HOST.md.

See it work

You:    I want to build a daily briefing app for my calendar.
You:    /office-hours
Claude: [asks about the pain — specific examples, not hypotheticals]

You:    Multiple Google calendars, events with stale info, wrong locations.
        Prep takes forever and the results aren't good enough...

Claude: I'm going to push back on the framing. You said "daily briefing
        app." But what you actually described is a personal chief of
        staff AI.
        [extracts 5 capabilities you didn't realize you were describing]
        [challenges 4 premises — you agree, disagree, or adjust]
        [generates 3 implementation approaches with effort estimates]
        RECOMMENDATION: Ship the narrowest wedge tomorrow, learn from
        real usage. The full vision is a 3-month project — start with
        the daily briefing that actually works.
        [writes design doc → feeds into downstream skills automatically]

You:    /plan-ceo-review
        [reads the design doc, challenges scope, runs 10-section review]

You:    /plan-eng-review
        [ASCII diagrams for data flow, state machines, error paths]
        [test matrix, failure modes, security concerns]

You:    Approve plan. Exit plan mode.
        [writes 2,400 lines across 11 files. ~8 minutes.]

You:    /review
        [AUTO-FIXED] 2 issues. [ASK] Race condition → you approve fix.

You:    /qa https://staging.myapp.com
        [opens real browser, clicks through flows, finds and fixes a bug]

You:    /ship
        Tests: 42 → 51 (+9 new). PR: github.com/you/app/pull/42

You said "daily briefing app." The agent said "you're building a chief of staff AI" — because it listened to your pain, not your feature request. Eight commands, end to end. That is not a copilot. That is a team.

The sprint

gstack is a process, not a collection of tools. The skills run in the order a sprint runs:

Think → Plan → Build → Review → Test → Ship → Reflect

Each skill feeds into the next. /office-hours writes a design doc that /plan-ceo-review reads. /plan-eng-review writes a test plan that /qa picks up. /review catches bugs that /ship verifies are fixed. Nothing falls through the cracks because every step knows what came before it.

Skill	Your specialist	What they do
/office-hours	YC Office Hours	Start here. Six forcing questions that reframe your product before you write code. Pushes back on your framing, challenges premises, generates implementation alternatives. Design doc feeds into every downstream skill.
/plan-ceo-review	CEO / Founder	Rethink the problem. Find the 10-star product hiding inside the request. Four modes: Expansion, Selective Expansion, Hold Scope, Reduction.
/plan-eng-review	Eng Manager	Lock in architecture, data flow, diagrams, edge cases, and tests. Forces hidden assumptions into the open.
/plan-design-review	Senior Designer	Rates each design dimension 0-10, explains what a 10 looks like, then edits the plan to get there. AI Slop detection. Interactive — one AskUserQuestion per design choice.
/plan-devex-review	Developer Experience Lead	Interactive DX review: explores developer personas, benchmarks against competitors' TTHW, designs your magical moment, traces friction points step by step. Scores error messages for the agents that read them (agent-ready errors). Three modes: DX EXPANSION, DX POLISH, DX TRIAGE. 20-45 forcing questions.
/design-consultation	Design Partner	Build a complete design system from scratch. Researches the landscape, proposes creative risks, generates realistic product mockups. Writes DESIGN.md in the open DESIGN.md format, so impeccable, Google Stitch, and any tool that reads it share one file.
/review	Staff Engineer	Find the bugs that pass CI but blow up in production. Auto-fixes the obvious ones. Flags completeness gaps and gate integrity: every weakened test, timeout, snapshot or suppression reaches a human by name. Advisory simplification lens flags over-built code — never blocks, never auto-applies.
/deslop-shared-libs	Shared Code Reviewer	Find worthwhile shared-code extractions in recent work. Compares up to five opportunities and recommends the best three, with source evidence, reliability gains, and total code savings. Recommendations only.
/test-audit	Test Auditor	Sweep existing tests for ones that cost more than they protect: source greps, duplicates, assertion-free probes, test-only exports. Every candidate carries an evidence card; report-only unless you approve a batch.
/investigate	Debugger	Systematic root-cause debugging. Iron Law: no fixes without investigation. Traces data flow, tests hypotheses, stops after 3 failed fixes.
/design-review	Designer Who Codes	Same audit as /plan-design-review, then fixes what it finds. Atomic commits, before/after screenshots. If you have impeccable installed, its engine runs first and every mechanical finding arrives tagged with its rule id.
/devex-review	DX Tester	Live developer experience audit. Actually tests your onboarding: navigates docs, tries the getting started flow, times TTHW, triggers CLI errors the way an agent meets them (gstack-error-capture: no terminal, contained, redacted). Compares against /plan-devex-review scores — the boomerang that shows if your plan matched reality.
/design-shotgun	Design Explorer	"Show me options." Generates 4-6 AI mockup variants, opens a comparison board in your browser, collects your feedback, and iterates. Taste memory learns what you like. Repeat until you love something, then hand it to /design-html.
/design-html	Design Engineer	Turn a mockup into production HTML that actually works. Pretext computed layout: text reflows, heights adjust, layouts are dynamic. 30KB, zero deps. Detects React/Svelte/Vue. Smart API routing per design type (landing page vs dashboard vs form). One slop-gate pass through the impeccable engine when you have it. The output is shippable, not a demo.
/qa	QA Lead	Explore browser, API, CLI, job and webhook behavior. Reproduce bugs, write failing regressions, fix the cause and re-verify before committing.
/qa-only	QA Reporter	Explore and report with replayable evidence. Suggest regression cases without changing product code or tests.
/pair-agent	Multi-Agent Coordinator	Share gstack's own browser with any AI agent. One command, one paste, connected. Works with OpenClaw, Hermes, Codex, Cursor, or anything that can curl. Each agent gets its own tab. Auto-launches headed mode so you watch everything. Auto-starts ngrok tunnel for remote agents. Scoped tokens, tab isolation, rate limiting, activity attribution. (Runs on the bundled browser — the fallback engine; agents driving Aside just open their own tabs.)
/cso	Chief Security Officer	Security audit with an application model, supported findings, independent challenge, and explicit coverage. Static assessment remains available without catalog profiles. With matching qualified profiles, comprehensive mode adds contained runtime/scanner execution and reviewable repair candidates for Node/Bun, Python, and Rails. Qualified runtime and scanner images are published for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64. Without Docker, audits run static assessment only. Runtime-tested bundles authenticate separate external assertions. Project-test completion remains self_reported because target code controls the test process; tested is reserved for a future target-independent completion witness.
/ship	Release Engineer	Sync main, run tests, explore changed behavior, audit coverage, gate integrity and docs, then verify, push and open a PR.
/land-and-deploy	Release Engineer	Merge the PR, wait for CI and deploy, verify production health. One command from "approved" to "verified in production."
/canary	SRE	Post-deploy monitoring loop. Watches for console errors, performance regressions, and page failures.
/benchmark	Performance Engineer	Baseline page load times, Core Web Vitals, and resource sizes. Compare before/after on every PR.
/eval-plan	Eval Planner	Preregister a paid eval before the first priced call: bars, arms, decoys and stop rules, a $0 stub-model dry run over the real inputs, and a three-item priced pilot whose extrapolation and spend table gate the approval.
/document-release	Technical Writer	Audit changed behavior against project docs on every ship, before final verification and publication. Also runs standalone. Shows updated, reviewed/current or blocked docs and any remaining gaps.
/document-generate	Documentation Author	Generate missing docs from scratch using the Diataxis framework. Researches the codebase first, then writes reference / how-to / tutorial / explanation docs that actually match the code. Invokable standalone or chained from /document-release when the coverage map finds gaps. Learn more: tutorial • how-to • why Diataxis.
/retro	Eng Manager	Team-aware weekly retro. Per-person breakdowns, shipping streaks, test health trends, growth opportunities. /retro global runs across all your projects and AI tools (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini).
/browse	QA Engineer	Give the agent eyes. Drives your Aside browser first — your real sessions, real clicks, real screenshots — through deterministic aside repl scripts. No Aside? It falls back to gstack's own Chromium: real clicks, ~100ms per command, and /open-gstack-browser shows it headed with sidebar, anti-bot stealth, and auto model routing. Every other browser skill stands on it.
/scrape	Data Extractor	Pull structured data off a web page — tables, lists, prices — in your Aside browser with the page's real logged-in state. On the fallback browser, /skillify turns the flow into a permanent browser-skill that runs in ~200ms next time.
/setup-browser-cookies	Session Manager	Copy selected cookies from Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Edge, Windows-only Opera and Opera GX, or macOS-only Comet, Arc, and Dia into gstack's bundled browser. Choose your profile and domains; copying and sign-in verification are separate. Only needed on the fallback path — Aside already has your sessions.
/autoplan	Review Pipeline	One command, fully reviewed plan. Runs CEO → design → DX → eng review automatically (eng always last, so the shipping gate reviews the final amended plan) with encoded decision principles. Surfaces only taste decisions for your approval.
/spec	Spec Author	Turn vague intent into a precise, executable spec in five phases (why, scope, technical with mandatory code-reading, draft, file). Outside-review quality gate before filing (Claude Code on Codex; Codex on other harnesses; blocks below 7/10), fail-closed secret redaction, dedupe against existing issues, archive to $GSTACK_STATE_ROOT/projects/$SLUG/specs/ for team-corpus recall. --execute spawns claude -p in a fresh worktree; /ship auto-closes the source issue on merge. Plan-mode aware.
/learn	Memory	Manage what gstack learned across sessions. Review, search, prune, and export project-specific patterns, pitfalls, and preferences. Learnings compound across sessions so gstack gets smarter on your codebase over time.
/make-pdf	Publisher	Markdown in, publication-quality document out. Mermaid and excalidraw fences render as vector diagrams, fully offline. Images scale to the page and never truncate; wide diagrams get their own landscape page. --to html emits one self-contained file, --to docx a Word doc.
/diagram	Diagram Maker	English in, editable diagram out. Emits a triplet: mermaid source, .excalidraw you can open and edit on excalidraw.com (hand-drawn style), and rendered SVG/PNG. Zero network. Embed the source in markdown and /make-pdf renders it.

The same /qa and /qa-only commands test CLIs, APIs, jobs, workers and webhooks with no browser: QA without a webpage.

Which review should I use?

Building for...	Plan stage (before code)	Live audit (after shipping)
End users (UI, web app, mobile)	/plan-design-review	/design-review
Developers (API, CLI, SDK, docs)	/plan-devex-review	/devex-review
Architecture (data flow, perf, tests)	/plan-eng-review	/review
All of the above	/autoplan (runs CEO → design → DX → eng, auto-detects which apply; eng always last)	—

Power tools

Skill	What it does
/codex	Second Opinion — independent code review from OpenAI Codex CLI. Review, challenge, and consult modes. Available on every harness except Codex.
/claude-code	Second Opinion — independent code review from Claude Code. Review, challenge, and consult modes, with session continuity for consultation. Available on every harness except Claude Code.
/careful	Safety Guardrails — warns before destructive commands (rm -rf, DROP TABLE, force-push). Say "be careful" to activate. Override any MEDIUM warning; root/home recursive deletes and default-branch force-pushes are hard-denied.
/freeze	Edit Lock — restrict file edits to one directory. Prevents accidental changes outside scope while debugging.
/guard	Full Safety — /careful + /freeze in one command. Maximum safety for prod work.
/unfreeze	Unlock — remove the /freeze boundary.
/open-gstack-browser	GStack Browser — launch gstack's own browser headed, with sidebar, anti-bot stealth, auto model routing (Sonnet for actions, Opus for analysis), one-click cookie import, and Claude Code integration. Clean up pages, take smart screenshots, edit CSS, and pass info back to your terminal. The visible face of the fallback engine; with Aside open you watch the agent's tabs there instead.
/setup-deploy	Deploy Configurator — one-time setup for /land-and-deploy. Detects your platform, production URL, and deploy commands.
/setup-gbrain	GBrain Onboarding — from zero to running gbrain in under 5 minutes. PGLite local, Supabase existing URL, or auto-provision a new Supabase project via Management API. MCP registration for Claude Code + per-repo trust triad (read-write/read-only/deny). Full guide.
/sync-gbrain	Keep Brain Current — re-index this repo's code into gbrain via gbrain sources add + gbrain sync --strategy code, refresh the ## GBrain Search Guidance block in CLAUDE.md, and auto-remove guidance when the capability check fails. --incremental (default), --full, --dry-run. Idempotent; safe to re-run.
/gstack-upgrade	Self-Updater — upgrade gstack to latest. Detects global vs vendored install, syncs both, shows what changed.
/ios-qa	iOS Live-Device QA (v1.43.0.0+) — drive a real iPhone or iPad over USB CoreDevice via an embedded StateServer in the app. Read Swift source, codegen typed @Observable accessors, run the agent loop. Optional --tailnet flag exposes the device to OpenClaw or any HTTP-capable agent on your Tailscale tailnet so remote agents can run iOS QA without ever touching the hardware. Capability-tier allowlist (observe/interact/mutate/restore), per-device session lock, audit log.
/ios-fix, /ios-design-review, /ios-clean, /ios-sync	iOS bug-fix loop, designer's-eye HIG audit, debug-bridge cleanup, and accessor resync. See docs/skills.md. End-to-end walkthrough: docs/howto-ios-testing-with-gstack.md.

Beyond the slash commands, gstack ships standalone CLIs (gstack-egress, gstack-context-bill, gstack-model-benchmark, the review and evidence ledgers, the iOS QA daemon): docs/standalone-binaries.md. The fallback browser's per-site domain skills and raw CDP escape hatch, and the voice-input aliases many skills carry, have their own pages.

Deep dives with examples and philosophy for every skill →

GBrain — persistent knowledge for your coding agent

GBrain is a persistent knowledge base for AI agents — think of it as the memory your agent actually keeps between sessions. GStack gives you a one-command path from zero to "it's running, my agent can call it."

/setup-gbrain

The four setup paths, the per-repo trust policy and memory sync, in brief: docs/gbrain-quick-tour.md. Full monty — every scenario, every flag, every bin helper, every troubleshooting step: USING_GBRAIN_WITH_GSTACK.md

Other references: docs/gbrain-sync.md (sync-specific guide) • docs/gbrain-sync-errors.md (error index)

Platform notes

macOS: everything runs. With the Aside browser (macOS 15+) open and signed in, the browser skills, /make-pdf and /diagram use it and your real sessions; otherwise they use the bundled browser ./setup builds. gstack never installs Aside.

Linux: everything runs on the bundled browser; Aside is macOS-only, so the readiness probe says NEEDS_ASIDE: Linux once and the skills use gstack's own Chromium. If Chromium installs but cannot launch because the host blocks unprivileged user namespaces (Ubuntu 24.04+ AppArmor default), set GSTACK_CHROMIUM_NO_SANDBOX=1.

Windows users: gstack works on Windows 11 via Git Bash or WSL. Aside is macOS-only, so on Windows (and Linux) the browser skills, /make-pdf, and /diagram always use gstack's bundled browser. Node.js is required in addition to Bun — Bun has a known bug with Playwright's pipe transport on Windows (bun#4253). The browse server automatically falls back to Node.js. Make sure both bun and node are on your PATH. Native /cso additionally requires PowerShell (PowerShell 7 pwsh is preferred; Windows PowerShell 5.1 is the fallback) and Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with the Desktop development with C++ workload; setup leaves that skill explicitly unavailable when they are absent. /cso is optional: if its native helper fails to build or publish, setup still finishes, says which step failed with the log path and retry command, and keeps an earlier helper when it has one (GSTACK_STRICT_BUILD=1 makes that failure fatal, as CI does).

Known issue: Windows Smart App Control (#2595). gstack's compiled binaries (browse, find-browse, design, pdf, gstack-global-discover) are built on your machine and unsigned, so Windows 11 with Smart App Control on refuses to start them; Git Bash shows Permission denied. setup detects this, names the blocked binaries and the skills that need them, and gstack-doctor reports them as blocked. Today's workarounds are running gstack inside WSL, or turning Smart App Control off. Details: troubleshooting. The sidebar terminal uses Consolas on Windows, so its text no longer renders spaced out.

From PowerShell, .\setup.ps1 (same arguments as ./setup) checks that Git for Windows, Bun and Node.js are on PATH, prints the winget command for any that are missing, and otherwise runs ./setup in Git Bash.

On Windows without Developer Mode (MSYS2 / Git Bash), setup falls back to file copies instead of symlinks because ln -snf produces frozen copies that don't refresh on git pull. Re-run cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setup after every git pull so your skill files match the repo. setup prints a one-line note reminding you. Unix and WSL keep symlinks and don't need the re-run.

Docs

Doc	What it covers
Skill Deep Dives	Philosophy, examples, and workflow for every skill (includes Greptile integration)
Why gstack	The story, the productivity numbers and their caveats, Karpathy's failure modes, parallel sprints
Install details	Setup timing, requirements in detail, team mode, the hooks setup registers
Other agents	OpenClaw and ClawHub, per-host notes, the Codex profile and model tiers, outside-review providers, the design binary's models
QA without a webpage	/qa and /qa-only on CLIs, APIs, jobs, workers and webhooks
Standalone binaries	The standalone gstack-* CLIs (egress auditor, context bill, model benchmark, the review and evidence ledgers, the iOS QA daemon), and the CSO evaluation producer contract
Privacy & Telemetry	What is sent, what never is, the update check, outside reviews, egress receipts
Uninstall	The uninstall script and manual removal
Diagrams & Document Formats	Mermaid/excalidraw fences in PDFs, image sizing and safety defaults, --to html|docx, /diagram triplets
First Production Deploy	What to do when /setup-deploy says nothing is deployed yet: hosting, env and secrets, DNS, checking it works, then back to /setup-deploy
Builder Ethos	Builder philosophy: Boil the Ocean, Search Before Building, three layers of knowledge
GBrain quick tour	The four setup paths, MCP registration, the per-repo trust policy, memory sync, Conductor env vars
Using GBrain with GStack	Every path, flag, bin helper, and troubleshooting step for /setup-gbrain
GBrain Sync	Cross-machine memory setup, privacy modes, troubleshooting
Architecture	Design decisions and system internals
Browser	How gstack drives Aside first (the contract, the cookbook, rendering, research), when the fallback engine kicks in, and the fallback's full $B command reference
Contributing	Dev setup, testing, contributor mode, and dev mode
Memorable recall bridge	Opt-in third-party workflow memory through gstack: two consents, what gstack hands over and can attest, removal, troubleshooting
Troubleshooting	Every not run / unavailable message, what it means, and the fix
Changelog	What's new in every version

Privacy & Telemetry

gstack sends nothing about how you use it unless you opt in. Telemetry is off by default and asked about once; the update check (two or three GitHub requests: a git ls-remote, a fetch of VERSION and, when that version equals yours but main has moved, a compare-API call; with telemetry on it also reports your gstack version and OS; on by default) turns off with gstack-config set update_check false; outside reviews (on by default; the first one prints a notice) send code to Codex or Claude Code under your own login and turn off with gstack-config set codex_reviews disabled. Every off-machine send writes a receipt you can audit with gstack-egress list. The full account, including the exact fields telemetry carries and the local state that is not telemetry: docs/privacy.md.

Troubleshooting

Not sure what's wrong? Run the doctor: ~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-doctor (on other hosts, ./setup --status in your gstack checkout ends with the doctor's absolute path). Without starting a skill or spending anything, it prints one row per check (install, state root, Bun, hooks, Codex and its cached model probe, artifacts sync, the browse bundle, the other compiled binaries, the /cso native helper, Claude Code, your largest session journal and recent /autoplan guard codes), each ok, warn, not configured or fail with the command that fixes it. It exits non-zero only on fail. --live also runs the paid Codex model check (one short call). Paste its output into bug reports.

A message says not run, unavailable or names a fix? Look it up in docs/troubleshooting.md: every gate message gstack prints, what it means, what was kept, and the command that fixes it.

Claude says it can't see the skills? Check that they are installed (ls ~/.claude/skills) and restart Claude Code; it lists every installed skill with its description, so CLAUDE.md does not need to enumerate them (a pasted list goes stale with each release). Your project's CLAUDE.md only needs the browsing rule:

## gstack
Use /browse from gstack for all web browsing. Never use mcp__claude-in-chrome__* tools.

If an older install prompt left an "Available skills:" line in your CLAUDE.md, delete it.

Skill not showing up, stale install, Codex skill descriptions, prefix modes, disabling skills, Chromium install problems: quick answers.

---

Free, MIT licensed, open source. No premium tier, no waitlist.

I open sourced how I build software. You can fork it and make it your own.

We're hiring. Want to ship real products at AI-coding speed and help harden gstack? Come work at YC — ycombinator.com/software Extremely competitive salary and equity. San Francisco, Dogpatch District.

License

MIT. Free forever. Go build something.