ad8400543c
* test(wireup): make gbrain-missing PATH fixture hermetic The gbrain-missing test appended the host PATH (and a hardcoded /opt/homebrew/bin) to the fixture PATH, so on any machine with a real gbrain installed the 'missing' case saw it, exited 0 instead of 2, and could never fail where the bug exists — a false green for a whole machine class. The fixture now keeps only root-owned OS dirs on the child PATH, and a new determinism check plants a host-like gbrain to prove it is unreachable. Absorbed from PR #2615 with authorship preserved; the PR-thread liveness screenshot (docs/images/gstack-pr-liveness-2255.png) is dropped — referenced by nothing in the tree. Fixes #2255 Co-authored-by: CommandCodeBot <noreply@commandcode.ai> * fix(evidence): stop bun's dotenv autoload from reaching the spawned command `bin/gstack-evidence` has a `#!/usr/bin/env bun` shebang, and bun AUTO-LOADS `.env`, `.env.<NODE_ENV>` and `.env.local` from the cwd into `process.env`. The wrapper then spawned the command with no `env` override, so every command run through it inherited those variables — and a repo `.env.local` routinely holds production credentials. Two things go wrong, and the second is worse than the leak: 1. Secrets reach a child that would not otherwise have them. `npm test` run by hand in the same shell sees none of them; the same command through the wrapper sees all of them. 2. THE COMMAND UNDER TEST BEHAVES DIFFERENTLY, so the ledger certifies a run that is not the run CI performs. Observed in a Next.js repo on 2026-08-20: four tests failed 4/4 through the wrapper and passed 5/5 without it, because app code branched on env vars only the wrapper supplied. Nearly an hour went into chasing a "flake" that was the measuring instrument. The wrapper exists to record trustworthy evidence, so silently altering the environment defeats its purpose. The fix builds the child env from `process.env` minus the keys bun injected, and detection is exact rather than heuristic: verified on bun 1.3.11, a dotenv file does NOT override a variable the shell already exported (the shell's value wins). So a key whose live value equals the dotenv file's value was injected by bun, and dropping it restores the environment the user's own shell would have given the command. A key whose live value differs is genuinely the caller's and survives. `BUN_DOTENV_FILES()` mirrors bun's precedence, including that `.env.local` is skipped when NODE_ENV is "test" — scrubbing a key bun never loaded would strip a variable the caller legitimately provided. Escape hatch: GSTACK_EVIDENCE_KEEP_DOTENV=1 keeps the old behaviour. When keys are scrubbed the wrapper warns with the KEY NAMES ONLY, so the diagnostic cannot become the leak it prevents. Tests: 6 cases, mutation-verified — removing `env: spawnEnv` reddens exactly the two leak tests and restoring it gives 30/30. Every leak test asserts the scrub warning fired, because `bun test` sets NODE_ENV=test and the first version of these tests passed vacuously against a `.env.local` bun had never loaded. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Absorbed from PR #2652 with authorship preserved. Wave additions: a doc-comment on the ${VAR}-expansion limitation (bun expands refs, the reader compares raw text — those keys are left in the child env, failing open) and a regression pin for the unreadable-.env fail-open path with a functional DAC-override skip guard. Fixes #2624 * fix(setup): reap dangling skill dirs when the payload is gone cleanup_old_claude_symlinks derived its work list from the payload directory, so when the payload was gone — precisely when orphans exist — the glob matched nothing and the loop never ran; the -f guard also followed symlinks, hiding dangling SKILL.md links even with a payload present. The cleanup now scans the DESTINATION skills dir (-e/-L, so dangling symlinks are visible) and anchors SKILL.md provenance to path segments (gstack/*, */gstack/*, */.gstack/render/claude/*) instead of a bare *gstack* substring that would eat a user skill under ~/tools/gstack-fork/. The Windows real-file arm stays payload-gated: a real file has no provable owner. Absorbed from PR #2634 (2 commits squashed) with authorship preserved. The symmetric cleanup_prefixed_claude_symlinks hole is filed as a TODOS.md residual in this wave. Fixes #2204 * fix(redact): tolerate EEXIST from recursive mkdir in install-prepush-hook on bun/Windows (#2635) fs.mkdirSync(dir, { recursive: true }) is a no-op on an existing directory in Node, but bun on Windows throws EEXIST - crashing hook install on any repo whose .git/hooks already existed, leaving the repo unprotected. Add lib/fs-utils.ts mkdirpSync: swallow EEXIST only when statSync confirms the path is an existing directory; a regular file occupying the path, a stat failure, or any other errno still rethrows. Use it in installPrepushHook(). The regression test emulates the Windows bun fs semantics via a bun --preload fixture, so the exact crash path runs (and fails on the old code) on any platform, including CI Linux. Absorbed from PR #2641 with authorship preserved. Fixes #2635 * fix(bin): route remaining Windows-reachable mkdirSync sites through mkdirpSync Sweep follow-up to #2641's lib/fs-utils.ts helper: bun on Windows throws EEXIST from a recursive mkdir on an existing dir, so every unguarded recursive mkdirSync on a Windows-reachable path is a latent crash. Converted: bin/gstack-decision-log (unguarded, runs on every decision log — the second call on any machine hits the pre-existing projects dir), bin/gstack-evidence logsDir + ledger dir sites, and bin/gstack-redact-prepush's skip-log site (already try-wrapped, so its failure mode was a silent skip-log loss rather than a crash — the fix makes the log survive). The ~15 remaining gbrain/mac-lane sites are deliberately left alone. Regression: fs-utils.test.ts drives gstack-decision-log twice, the second run under the bun-Windows EEXIST preload fixture — the pre-sweep code exits 1 with EEXIST there; verified red against v1.68.3.0. * fix(setup-gbrain): warn about the ZeroEntropy sunset before Sept 4 ZeroEntropy was acquired by Notion and sunsets its hosted API on September 4, 2026. A gbrain configured with the zeroentropyai embedding recipe keeps importing pages after that date but embedding silently fails — pages land structurally with no semantic search, this repo's tracker P1 (TODOS.md NEXT PRIORITY). Nothing in gstack ever recommended ZeroEntropy (the dependency is gbrain-internal), so the gstack side is detection + advisory: the wireup helper warns when ~/.gbrain/config.json names the recipe (fail-open grep — a missing, unreadable, or other-provider config stays silent and never blocks a working setup), the setup-gbrain provider-default comments say never to select the legacy recipe for a new brain, and USING_GBRAIN_WITH_GSTACK.md gains a troubleshooting entry. The gbrain-side provider migration stays open upstream. Refs #2365 * fix(gbrain-source-wireup): first sync targets the registered source, not --repo The wireup registered a federated source by id, then ran 'gbrain sync --repo $WORKTREE' — which resolves against the brain's DEFAULT source and (on gbrain 0.46.x) rewrites that source's local_path anchor to our worktree. Net effect: the user's primary knowledge source silently repointed at the gstack brain worktree while the just-registered source got zero pages, and pages_synced still reported success. The sync now targets the registered id ('gbrain sync --source $id', the same form the repo's own troubleshooting documents). Because the script's stated floor is gbrain >= 0.18.0 and nothing proves --source exists there, support is probed via 'gbrain sync --help' first: an older gbrain keeps the wrong-but-working --repo call with an upgrade warning instead of converting it into a hard failure. The probe sits after the GSTACK_BRAIN_NO_SYNC early-exit and is unreachable in --probe mode. Regression tests (fail on v1.68.3.0): a no-skip sync case asserting the call log shows 'sync --source gstack-brain-<id>' and never 'sync --repo', and an old-gbrain fallback case (fake sync --help without --source) asserting --repo plus the upgrade warning. Fixes #2662 * fix(setup): --host slate exits informatively instead of silently installing nothing slate passed --host validation (added to the accept-list in v1.64.1.0) but never got a dispatch arm, and the all-INSTALL_*-zero fallback lives inside the auto branch — so './setup --host slate' configured nothing and exited 0, a silent no-op strictly worse than the original hard rejection. slate is now an informational arm (per docs/designs/SLATE_HOST.md it is blocked on the host-config refactor; Slate reads .claude/skills as a compatibility fallback, so the arm points at './setup --host claude'), and a defensive guard after the dispatch chain errors loudly (naming the host, the missing arm, and the valid targets, exit 1) if a future host is ever accepted without being wired. Regression tests (fail on v1.68.3.0): a dispatch-arm ratchet asserting every accept-listed install target has a matching dispatch branch — the exact drift class; a registry cross-check deriving both sides from hosts/index.ts and setup's case arms; a behavioral slate probe (exit 0, points at --host claude, never reaches the installer — on unfixed code it fell through into the installer); and a static pin on the guard's shape. Fixes #2361 * fix(make-pdf): resolve the sibling browse binary from execPath, not argv[0] In a bun-compiled binary process.argv[0] is the raw invocation string — often relative ('./pdf', 'pdf') — so dirname(argv[0]) yielded '.' and the sibling candidates (../browse/dist/browse etc.) resolved against the CWD instead of the install dir. Resolution was cwd-dependent: correct-by-luck when the fallbacks rescued it, wrong when a cwd-relative path matched. process.execPath is always the absolute binary path. The resolution step takes an injectable selfPath (defaulted) because under bun test the process path is the bun runtime and the compiled-binary shapes are otherwise unreachable. The issue's other half — pdf setup failing on newtab('about:blank') — was already fixed on main in v1.64.0.0 (browse/src/url-validation.ts exact-match allows about:blank; its comment names this exact smoke). This commit closes what remains. Regression tests (the sibling-via-selfPath case fails on v1.68.3.0 — pre-fix code ignores the seam and either resolves the global install or throws): sibling resolution from an install-shaped tree, and a decoy-browse-DIRECTORY case pinning that a directory never wins resolution. Fixes #2156 * fix(memory-ingest): store the normalized git_remote so unattributed pages hit the policy filter buildTranscriptPage wrote the normalized '_unattributed' sentinel into the page FRONTMATTER but stored the raw resolved remote ('' when unresolvable) on the page object. The policy filter fast-paths !p.git_remote, so under --include-unattributed an explicit '_unattributed → deny' (or read-only) policy never applied to exactly the pages it names — they ingested unpoliced. The stored value now matches the frontmatter. Regression test (fails on v1.68.3.0): seeds the REAL bin/gstack-gbrain-repo-policy store with '_unattributed → deny' through its own set verb, ingests an unresolvable-remote session with --include-unattributed, and asserts nothing reaches gbrain — pre-fix the '' remote bypassed the filter and the import ran. A fake echoing tiers would pass on both sides of the fix; the real helper prints 'none' for unknown keys, so only a genuinely applied deny distinguishes the two. Fixes #2353 * fix(land-and-deploy): MERGED recovery reconciles and reports remote-branch cleanup Step 4's merge commands carry --delete-branch, and the success path tells the user 'The branch has been cleaned up.' When gh exits non-zero AFTER GitHub already merged (routine in worktree layouts: gh's local cleanup runs git checkout <base> and fails), the §4a-postfail MERGED recovery re-established everything EXCEPT the branch deletion — and said nothing about it, so the discrepancy was invisible. The MERGED path now reconciles: git ls-remote --heads distinguishes branch-already-gone (exit 0, empty → 'already cleaned up', idempotent on re-runs) from branch-survived (offer confirm-first deletion, matching the section's worktree posture; -d not -D for any local branch) from check-itself-failed (non-zero exit → 'couldn't verify', skip the offer — never read a failed check as a clean branch). Template + regenerated SKILL.md + test extensions land in one commit (the md-sync assertion goes red otherwise). Regression assertions (fail on v1.68.3.0: no delete-branch reconciliation existed in test/ at all) pin the ls-remote check, the confirm-first delete, and the absent-vs-failed distinction. Fixes #2656 * fix(scripts): stop heredoc bodies deadlocking under Homebrew bash `./setup --help` can hang forever on macOS, printing nothing, with no way to tell it apart from a slow install. Eleven scripts carry the same latent hang, `setup` itself being the one every user hits first. bash 5.2+ delivers a heredoc body of 64KiB or less through a pipe: the forked child writes the entire body before exec, and nothing reads the other end until the command starts. Under macOS pipe-KVA pressure the kernel hands a fresh pipe a 512-byte buffer instead of the usual 16-64KiB, so any body of 512 bytes or more blocks write() permanently. The capacity check bash would need to notice (F_GETPIPE_SZ) is Linux-only, so it never fires here. It is pressure-dependent, which is why it reads as "worked on my machine" — the same script runs fine all day and then wedges. Homebrew bash is what `#!/usr/bin/env bash` resolves to on a Mac with brew on PATH, which is most of them. Apple's /bin/bash 3.2 predates the pipe path and is unaffected, so the bug is invisible to anyone testing with the system shell. The fix is `BASH_COMPAT=50` in each affected script, which restores the pre-5.2 tempfile path: $ bash -c 'probe() { [ -p /dev/stdin ] && echo PIPE || echo TEMPFILE; } probe <<EOF $(printf "x%.0s" $(seq 1 1000)) EOF' PIPE $ BASH_COMPAT=50 bash -c '...same...' TEMPFILE - Not a `#!/bin/bash` shebang swap: that pins the script to whatever bash lives at /bin (3.2 on macOS, absent on some Linux distributions) and is bypassed entirely by `bash script.sh` call sites. The variable survives both. - Not exported, so child processes keep their own compat level. - Placed below any `--help` sed range that reads $0, so usage output is unchanged (verified on all eleven). - Every guarded script is bash-3.2-clean — no associative arrays, case conversion, or mapfile — so compat level 50 costs them nothing. test/heredoc-pipe-deadlock.test.ts scans every tracked shell script for a heredoc body in the 512B-64KiB window and fails without the guard, and proves the mechanism at runtime on bash 5.2+ by asserting the body moves from PIPE to TEMPFILE. On older bash the runtime half is skipped, since the pipe path does not exist there. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Absorbed from PR #2640 with authorship preserved. Wave adaptations: the pipe-probe test skips on minimal-/dev environments without /dev/stdin (it would report OTHER for an unobservable fd), and one caveat verified during review: on bash 4.3/4.4 (e.g. Git Bash), assigning BASH_COMPAT=50 prints a non-fatal 'invalid value' warning to stderr — those bashes are already on tempfiles, so the guard is a no-op there; windows-setup-e2e exercises this empirically. * docs: TODOS.md v1.69 wave close-out Move the slate P4 entry and the ZeroEntropy P1's gstack-side half to Completed (v1.69.0.0); reframe the ZeroEntropy NEXT PRIORITY entry around the remaining gbrain-side work; file the wave's four residuals with rationale — the prefixed-cleanup symmetric conversion, the #2163 legacy-slug checkpoint heal, the invited #2657 --reconcile contribution, and the table-driven setup host dispatch behind the new cross-check ratchet. * chore: bump version and changelog (v1.69.0.0) Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> --------- Co-authored-by: Som Samantray <som.samantray@gmail.com> Co-authored-by: CommandCodeBot <noreply@commandcode.ai> Co-authored-by: Connex Client Access <paul@paulkortman.com> Co-authored-by: y$un_ <forrest.sun527@gmail.com> Co-authored-by: Lockyer <135391289+Lockyer228@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Benjamin D. Smith <benjamin.smith@binarysword.com> Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
gstack
"I don't think I've typed like a line of code probably since December, basically, which is an extremely large change." — Andrej Karpathy, No Priors podcast, March 2026
When I heard Karpathy say this, I wanted to find out how. How does one person ship like a team of twenty? Peter Steinberger built OpenClaw — 247K GitHub stars — essentially solo with AI agents. The revolution is here. A single builder with the right tooling can move faster than a traditional team.
I'm Garry Tan, President & CEO of Y Combinator. I've worked with thousands of startups — Coinbase, Instacart, Rippling — when they were one or two people in a garage. Before YC, I was one of the first eng/PM/designers at Palantir, cofounded Posterous (sold to Twitter), and built Bookface, YC's internal social network.
gstack is my answer. I've been building products for twenty years, and right now I'm shipping more products than I ever have. In the last 60 days: 3 production services, 40+ shipped features, part-time, while running YC full-time. On logical code change — not raw LOC, which AI inflates — my 2026 run rate is ~810× my 2013 pace (11,417 vs 14 logical lines/day). Year-to-date (through April 18), 2026 has already produced 240× the entire 2013 year. Measured across 40 public + private garrytan/* repos including Bookface, after excluding one demo repo. AI wrote most of it. The point isn't who typed it, it's what shipped.
The LOC critics aren't wrong that raw line counts inflate with AI. They are wrong that normalized-for-inflation, I'm less productive. I'm more productive, by a lot. Full methodology, caveats, and reproduction script: On the LOC Controversy.
2026 — 1,237 contributions and counting:
2013 — when I built Bookface at YC (772 contributions):
Same person. Different era. The difference is the tooling.
gstack is how I do it. It turns Claude Code 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. Twenty-three specialists and eight power tools, all slash commands, all Markdown, all free, MIT license.
This is my open source software factory. I use it every day. I'm sharing it because these tools should be available to everyone.
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
- Install gstack (30 seconds — see below)
- Run
/office-hours— describe what you're building - Run
/plan-ceo-reviewon any feature idea - Run
/reviewon any branch with changes - Run
/qaon your staging URL - Stop there. You'll know if this is for you.
Install — 30 seconds
Requirements: Claude Code, Git, Bun v1.0+, Node.js (Windows only)
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 && ./setupthen add a "gstack" section to CLAUDE.md that says to use the /browse skill from gstack for all web browsing, never use mcp__claude-in-chrome__* tools, and lists the available skills: /office-hours, /plan-ceo-review, /plan-eng-review, /plan-design-review, /design-consultation, /design-shotgun, /design-html, /review, /ship, /land-and-deploy, /canary, /benchmark, /browse, /connect-chrome, /qa, /qa-only, /design-review, /setup-browser-cookies, /setup-deploy, /setup-gbrain, /retro, /investigate, /document-release, /document-generate, /codex, /cso, /autoplan, /plan-devex-review, /devex-review, /careful, /freeze, /guard, /unfreeze, /gstack-upgrade, /learn. 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).
Swap required for optional if you'd rather nudge teammates than block them.
OpenClaw
OpenClaw spawns Claude Code sessions via ACP, so every gstack skill just works when Claude Code has gstack installed. Paste this to your OpenClaw agent:
Install gstack: run
git clone --single-branch --depth 1 https://github.com/garrytan/gstack.git ~/.claude/skills/gstack && cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setupto install gstack for Claude Code. Then add a "Coding Tasks" section to AGENTS.md that says: when spawning Claude Code sessions for coding work, tell the session to use gstack skills. Include these examples — security audit: "Load gstack. Run /cso", code review: "Load gstack. Run /review", QA test a URL: "Load gstack. Run /qa https://...", build a feature end-to-end: "Load gstack. Run /autoplan, implement the plan, then run /ship", plan before building: "Load gstack. Run /office-hours then /autoplan. Save the plan, don't implement."
After setup, just talk to your OpenClaw agent naturally:
| You say | What happens |
|---|---|
| "Fix the typo in README" | Simple — Claude Code session, no gstack needed |
| "Run a security audit on this repo" | Spawns Claude Code with Run /cso |
| "Build me a notifications feature" | Spawns Claude Code with /autoplan → implement → /ship |
| "Help me plan the v2 API redesign" | Spawns Claude Code with /office-hours → /autoplan, saves plan |
See docs/OPENCLAW.md for advanced dispatch routing and the gstack-lite/gstack-full prompt templates.
Native OpenClaw Skills (via ClawHub)
Four methodology skills that work directly in your OpenClaw agent, no Claude Code session needed. Install from ClawHub:
clawhub install gstack-openclaw-office-hours gstack-openclaw-ceo-review gstack-openclaw-investigate gstack-openclaw-retro
| Skill | What it does |
|---|---|
gstack-openclaw-office-hours |
Product interrogation with 6 forcing questions |
gstack-openclaw-ceo-review |
Strategic challenge with 4 scope modes |
gstack-openclaw-investigate |
Root cause debugging methodology |
gstack-openclaw-retro |
Weekly engineering retrospective |
These are conversational skills. Your OpenClaw agent runs them directly via chat.
Other AI Agents
gstack works on 10 AI coding agents, not just Claude. Setup auto-detects which agents you have installed:
git clone --single-branch --depth 1 https://github.com/garrytan/gstack.git ~/gstack
cd ~/gstack && ./setup
Or target a specific agent with ./setup --host <name>:
| Agent | Flag | Skills install to |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Codex CLI | --host codex |
${CODEX_HOME:-~/.codex}/skills/gstack-*/ |
| OpenCode | --host opencode |
~/.config/opencode/skills/gstack-*/ |
| Cursor | --host cursor |
~/.cursor/skills/gstack-*/ |
| Factory Droid | --host factory |
~/.factory/skills/gstack-*/ |
| Slate | --host slate |
~/.slate/skills/gstack-*/ |
| Kiro | --host kiro |
~/.kiro/skills/gstack-*/ |
| Hermes | --host hermes |
~/.hermes/skills/gstack-*/ |
| GBrain (mod) | --host gbrain |
~/.gbrain/skills/gstack-*/ |
For Codex, setup reads the top-level model from
${CODEX_HOME:-~/.codex}/config.toml and generates the matching behavioral
profile. gpt-5.6-sol automatically receives bounded-scope instructions that
finish the requested lake without expanding into adjacent cleanup or speculative
hardening. The Sol profile is exact-match only: dated snapshots and other 5.6
variants get the generic GPT profile, and setup warns on near-misses like
gpt-5.6-sol-2026-08-01. Override detection with ./setup --host codex --model <id> — the
override applies to that run only; set model in your Codex config.toml to
make it stick across upgrades. After changing your Codex model, rerun
./setup --host codex to regenerate the skills.
Want to add support for another agent? See docs/ADDING_A_HOST.md. It's one TypeScript config file, zero code changes.
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. 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. |
/review |
Staff Engineer | Find the bugs that pass CI but blow up in production. Auto-fixes the obvious ones. Flags completeness gaps. |
/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. |
/devex-review |
DX Tester | Live developer experience audit. Actually tests your onboarding: navigates docs, tries the getting started flow, times TTHW, screenshots errors. 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). The output is shippable, not a demo. |
/qa |
QA Lead | Test your app, find bugs, fix them with atomic commits, re-verify. Auto-generates regression tests for every fix. |
/qa-only |
QA Reporter | Same methodology as /qa but report only. Pure bug report without code changes. |
/pair-agent |
Multi-Agent Coordinator | Share your 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. |
/cso |
Chief Security Officer | OWASP Top 10 + STRIDE threat model. Zero-noise: 17 false positive exclusions, 8/10+ confidence gate, independent finding verification. Each finding includes a concrete exploit scenario. |
/ship |
Release Engineer | Sync main, run tests, audit coverage, push, open PR. Bootstraps test frameworks if you don't have one. |
/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. |
/document-release |
Technical Writer | Update all project docs to match what you just shipped. Catches stale READMEs automatically. Builds a Diataxis coverage map (reference / how-to / tutorial / explanation) so gaps are visible in the PR body. |
/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. Real Chromium browser, real clicks, real screenshots. ~100ms per command. /open-gstack-browser launches GStack Browser with sidebar, anti-bot stealth, and auto model routing. |
/setup-browser-cookies |
Session Manager | Import cookies from your real browser (Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge) into the headless session. Test authenticated pages. |
/autoplan |
Review Pipeline | One command, fully reviewed plan. Runs CEO → design → eng review automatically 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). Codex quality gate before file (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. |
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 → eng → DX, auto-detects which apply) |
— |
Power tools
| Skill | What it does |
|---|---|
/codex |
Second Opinion — independent code review from OpenAI Codex CLI. Three modes: review (pass/fail gate), adversarial challenge, and open consultation. Cross-model analysis when both /review and /codex have run. |
/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 Browser 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. |
/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 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. |
Standalone binaries
Beyond the slash-command skills, gstack ships standalone CLIs for workflows that don't belong inside a session:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
gstack-model-benchmark |
Cross-model benchmark — run the same prompt through Claude, GPT (via Codex CLI), and Gemini; compare latency, tokens, cost, and (optionally) LLM-judge quality score. Auth detected per provider, unavailable providers skip cleanly. Output as table, JSON, or markdown. --dry-run validates flags + auth without spending API calls. |
gstack-taste-update |
Design taste learning — writes approvals and rejections from /design-shotgun into a persistent per-project taste profile. Decays 5%/week. Feeds back into future variant generation so the system learns what you actually pick. |
gstack-egress |
Egress receipt auditor — every gstack-initiated off-machine send writes a tamper-evident, hash-chained receipt to ~/.gstack/security/egress.jsonl before the send. list shows what gstack attempted to send and to which host, grants shows the standing consent settings plus the exact command that revokes each, verify recomputes the hash chain and exits 3 on tamper (catches edits, reordering, and mid-chain deletion; truncating or deleting the ledger itself is out of scope — it's a forensic log, not tamper-proof storage). |
gstack-context-bill |
Token bill-of-materials — read-only, offline audit of what an installed skills tree costs in tokens: always-on frontmatter every session pays vs per-invocation SKILL.md + forced references. --diff compares two trees, --budget enforces a ceiling, --exact opts into Anthropic count_tokens (sends file text off-machine; writes an egress receipt first, degrades to the offline estimate if the receipt can't be written). |
gstack-code-intelligence |
Code-intelligence provider picker — wraps GBrain, Sourcebot, and Graphify behind one interface: options/status to see what's available, select to pick one, index/search to use it, suggest to check whether the one-time indexing offer should fire here. The offer triggers on large repos (1,000+ tracked files; a decline is persisted). Non-local providers refuse to index or search until you record per-repo consent (consent <repo> yes|no — the query text is repo-derived content), the per-repo trust policy's deny and read-only tiers veto write-class operations regardless of consent, and every off-machine send writes an egress receipt. Fully optional — with nothing selected, gstack falls back to grep. |
gstack-verify-gate |
Verification stop hook (opt-in) — blocks a Claude Code turn from ending until the project's declared verify command passes (after 3 blocked re-entries it yields with a loud still-RED warning instead of looping forever). Declare it on one line in CLAUDE.md: <!-- gstack:verify: bun test -->. Hooks bypass the permission system, so a declared command never runs until you trust it once per repo (gstack-verify-gate --trust); editing the command invalidates trust until re-granted, and every grant is audit-logged. ./setup never registers it for you — opt in with gstack-settings-hook add-event --event Stop --command ~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-verify-gate --source verify-gate, remove with gstack-settings-hook remove-source --source verify-gate. |
gstack-wtree |
Working-tree fingerprint — prints a content hash of what's actually on disk (temp index seeded from the stat cache, ~40x cheaper than a full re-hash; untracked source counts, gitignored scratch doesn't). Identical content fingerprints identically through commits, rebases, amends, and squashes — it's what binds reviews and test evidence to content instead of commit SHAs. |
gstack-evidence |
Verification-evidence ledger — run --label <lane> -- <cmd> transparently wraps any test command (the child's exit code always passes through) and records what ran against which working-tree fingerprint; check grades each label FRESH/STALE/MISSING with --expect-cmd, --max-age, and --allow-paths binding. /ship and /land-and-deploy cite fresh evidence instead of re-running suites. Per-run logs are 0600, capped at 2MB, pruned after 30 days; the ledger and logs stay machine-local by design. |
gstack-issue-guard |
Tracker-text trust envelope — fetches GitHub issue/PR text (issue <n>, pr-body, pr-comments, or --stdin) and wraps it in a labeled envelope so agents treat it as data: injection-shaped lines get labeled even through fullwidth and invisible-character evasion, and forged envelope banners are defused. Every tracker-text ingress in gstack routes through it, enforced by a CI scanner. |
gstack-ios-qa-daemon |
iOS QA daemon — Mac-side broker between an agent and a connected iPhone over USB CoreDevice. Loopback by default; --tailnet opens a Tailscale-facing listener with identity-gated capability tiers. Single-instance via flock on ~/.gstack/ios-qa-daemon.pid. See docs/howto-ios-testing-with-gstack.md. |
gstack-ios-qa-mint |
iOS allowlist manager — owner-grant CLI for the tailnet allowlist. grant/revoke/list against ~/.gstack/ios-qa-allowlist.json (mode 0600). Remote agents never auto-allowlist; this is the explicit-intent path. |
gstack-ios-qa-regen |
iOS bridge regenerator — deterministically installs the canonical DebugBridge package, generates typed state accessors, and records the installed gstack version. Safe to rerun after source changes or upgrades. |
./setup also registers one default-on Stop hook in ~/.claude/settings.json:
gstack-timeline-stop (closes dangling session-timeline entries when a session
is interrupted; fail-open — 2s internal budget, always exits 0, can never block
a session). Skip it with ./setup --no-team, remove it with
gstack-settings-hook remove-source --source gstack-timeline-stop;
gstack-uninstall removes it too.
Hook registration is canonical-only: every hook command points at the stable
~/.claude/skills/gstack install, never the tree setup ran from, so deleting
a worktree or Conductor workspace can't leave dead hooks erroring in your
sessions. Every ./setup run also heals first: gstack-settings-hook prune-stale --repoint removes dead gstack hook entries, re-points stale ones
at the stable install, and collapses duplicates, printing one line (and
writing a backup beside the file) only when it changed something.
Continuous checkpoint mode (opt-in, local by default)
Set gstack-config set checkpoint_mode continuous and skills auto-commit your work as you go with a WIP: prefix plus a structured [gstack-context] body (decisions, remaining work, failed approaches). Survives crashes and context switches. /context-restore reads those commits to reconstruct session state. /ship filter-squashes WIP commits before the PR (preserving non-WIP commits) so bisect stays clean. Push is opt-in via checkpoint_push=true — default is local-only so you don't trigger CI on every WIP commit.
Domain skills + raw CDP escape hatch
Two new browser primitives compound the gstack agent over time:
$B domain-skill save— agent saves a per-site note (e.g., "LinkedIn's Apply button lives in an iframe") that fires automatically next time it visits that hostname. Quarantined → active after 3 successful uses → optional cross-project promotion via$B domain-skill promote-to-global. Storage lives alongside/learn's per-project learnings file. Full reference: docs/domain-skills.md.$B cdp <Domain.method>— raw Chrome DevTools Protocol escape hatch for the rare case curated commands miss. Deny-default: methods must be explicitly added tobrowse/src/cdp-allowlist.tswith a one-line justification. Two-tier mutex serializes browser-scoped CDP calls against per-tab work. Output for data-exfil methods is wrapped in the UNTRUSTED envelope.
Want raw CDP with no rails, no allowlist, no daemon — just thin transport from agent to Chrome? browser-use/browser-harness-js is a different philosophy (agent-authored helpers vs gstack's curated commands) and a good fit if you don't want gstack's security stack. The two can coexist: gstack's
$B cdpand harness can both attach to the same Chrome via Playwright'snewCDPSession.
Deep dives with examples and philosophy for every skill →
Karpathy's four failure modes? Already covered.
Andrej Karpathy's AI coding rules (17K stars) nail four failure modes: wrong assumptions, overcomplexity, orthogonal edits, imperative over declarative. gstack's workflow skills enforce all four. /office-hours forces assumptions into the open before code is written. The Confusion Protocol stops Claude from guessing on architectural decisions. /review catches unnecessary complexity and drive-by edits. /ship transforms tasks into verifiable goals with test-first execution. If you already use Karpathy-style CLAUDE.md rules, gstack is the workflow enforcement layer that makes them stick across entire sprints, not just single prompts.
Parallel sprints
gstack works well with one sprint. It gets interesting with ten running at once.
Design is at the heart. /design-consultation builds your design system from scratch, researches what's out there, proposes creative risks, and writes DESIGN.md. But the real magic is the shotgun-to-HTML pipeline.
/design-shotgun is how you explore. You describe what you want. It generates 4-6 AI mockup variants using GPT Image. Then it opens a comparison board in your browser with all variants side by side. You pick favorites, leave feedback ("more whitespace", "bolder headline", "lose the gradient"), and it generates a new round. Repeat until you love something. Taste memory kicks in after a few rounds so it starts biasing toward what you actually like. No more describing your vision in words and hoping the AI gets it. You see options, pick the good ones, and iterate visually.
/design-html makes it real. Take that approved mockup (from /design-shotgun, a CEO plan, a design review, or just a description) and turn it into production-quality HTML/CSS. Not the kind of AI HTML that looks fine at one viewport width and breaks everywhere else. This uses Pretext for computed text layout: text actually reflows on resize, heights adjust to content, layouts are dynamic. 30KB overhead, zero dependencies. It detects your framework (React, Svelte, Vue) and outputs the right format. Smart API routing picks different Pretext patterns depending on whether it's a landing page, dashboard, form, or card layout. The output is something you'd actually ship, not a demo.
/qa was a massive unlock. It let me go from 6 to 12 parallel workers. Claude Code saying "I SEE THE ISSUE" and then actually fixing it, generating a regression test, and verifying the fix — that changed how I work. The agent has eyes now.
Smart review routing. Just like at a well-run startup: CEO doesn't have to look at infra bug fixes, design review isn't needed for backend changes. gstack tracks what reviews are run, figures out what's appropriate, and just does the smart thing. The Review Readiness Dashboard tells you where you stand before you ship.
Test everything. /ship bootstraps test frameworks from scratch if your project doesn't have one. Every /ship run produces a coverage audit. Every /qa bug fix generates a regression test. 100% test coverage is the goal — tests make vibe coding safe instead of yolo coding.
/document-release is the engineer you never had. It reads every doc file in your project, cross-references the diff, and updates everything that drifted. README, ARCHITECTURE, CONTRIBUTING, CLAUDE.md, TODOS — all kept current automatically. And now /ship auto-invokes it — docs stay current without an extra command.
Real browser mode. /open-gstack-browser launches GStack Browser, an AI-controlled Chromium with anti-bot stealth, custom branding, and the sidebar extension baked in. Sites like Google and NYTimes work without captchas. The menu bar says "GStack Browser" instead of "Chrome for Testing." Your regular Chrome stays untouched. All existing browse commands work unchanged. $B disconnect returns to headless. The browser stays alive as long as the window is open... no idle timeout killing it while you're working.
Sidebar agent — your AI browser assistant. Type natural language in the Chrome side panel and a child Claude instance executes it. "Navigate to the settings page and screenshot it." "Fill out this form with test data." "Go through every item in this list and extract the prices." The sidebar auto-routes to the right model: Sonnet for fast actions (click, navigate, screenshot) and Opus for reading and analysis. Each task gets up to 5 minutes. The sidebar agent runs in an isolated session, so it won't interfere with your main Claude Code window. One-click cookie import right from the sidebar footer.
Personal automation. The sidebar agent isn't just for dev workflows. Example: "Browse my kid's school parent portal and add all the other parents' names, phone numbers, and photos to my Google Contacts." Two ways to get authenticated: (1) log in once in the headed browser, your session persists, or (2) click the "cookies" button in the sidebar footer to import cookies from your real Chrome. Once authenticated, Claude navigates the directory, extracts the data, and creates the contacts.
Prompt injection defense. Hostile web pages try to hijack your sidebar agent. gstack ships a layered defense: content filters (datamarking, hidden-element stripping, ARIA scrubbing, URL blocklist) on every page read, plus a 22MB ML classifier running locally in a sidecar subprocess that scans page-derived content before the agent sees it, with a verdict combiner that requires classifier agreement before blocking (prevents single-model false positives on Stack Overflow-style instruction pages). Everything runs on your machine, no network calls. Emergency kill switch: GSTACK_SECURITY_OFF=1. See ARCHITECTURE.md for the full stack.
Browser handoff when the AI gets stuck. Hit a CAPTCHA, auth wall, or MFA prompt? $B handoff opens a visible Chrome at the exact same page with all your cookies and tabs intact. Solve the problem, tell Claude you're done, $B resume picks up right where it left off. The agent even suggests it automatically after 3 consecutive failures.
/pair-agent is cross-agent coordination. You're in Claude Code. You also have OpenClaw running. Or Hermes. Or Codex. You want them both looking at the same website. Type /pair-agent, pick your agent, and a GStack Browser window opens so you can watch. The skill prints a block of instructions. Paste that block into the other agent's chat. It exchanges a one-time setup key for a session token, creates its own tab, and starts browsing. You see both agents working in the same browser, each in their own tab, neither able to interfere with the other. If ngrok is installed, the tunnel starts automatically so the other agent can be on a completely different machine. Same-machine agents get a zero-friction shortcut that writes credentials directly. This is the first time AI agents from different vendors can coordinate through a shared browser with real security: scoped tokens, tab isolation, rate limiting, domain restrictions, and activity attribution.
Multi-AI second opinion. /codex gets an independent review from OpenAI's Codex CLI — a completely different AI looking at the same diff. Three modes: code review with a pass/fail gate, adversarial challenge that actively tries to break your code, and open consultation with session continuity. When both /review (Claude) and /codex (OpenAI) have reviewed the same branch, you get a cross-model analysis showing which findings overlap and which are unique to each.
Safety guardrails on demand. Say "be careful" and /careful warns before any destructive command — rm -rf, DROP TABLE, force-push, git reset --hard. /freeze locks edits to one directory while debugging so Claude can't accidentally "fix" unrelated code. /guard activates both. /investigate auto-freezes to the module being investigated.
Proactive skill suggestions. gstack notices what stage you're in — brainstorming, reviewing, debugging, testing — and suggests the right skill. Don't like it? Say "stop suggesting" and it remembers across sessions.
10-15 parallel sprints
gstack is powerful with one sprint. It is transformative with ten running at once.
Conductor runs multiple Claude Code sessions in parallel — each in its own isolated workspace. One session running /office-hours on a new idea, another doing /review on a PR, a third implementing a feature, a fourth running /qa on staging, and six more on other branches. All at the same time. I regularly run 10-15 parallel sprints — that's the practical max right now.
The sprint structure is what makes parallelism work. Without a process, ten agents is ten sources of chaos. With a process — think, plan, build, review, test, ship — each agent knows exactly what to do and when to stop. You manage them the way a CEO manages a team: check in on the decisions that matter, let the rest run.
Voice input (AquaVoice, Whisper, etc.)
gstack skills have voice-friendly trigger phrases. Say what you want naturally — "run a security check", "test the website", "do an engineering review" — and the right skill activates. You don't need to remember slash command names or acronyms.
Uninstall
Option 1: Run the uninstall script
If gstack is installed on your machine:
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-uninstall
This handles skills, symlinks, global state (~/.gstack/), project-local state, browse daemons, and temp files. Use --keep-state to preserve config and analytics. Use --force to skip confirmation.
Option 2: Manual removal (no local repo)
If you don't have the repo cloned (e.g. you installed via a Claude Code paste and later deleted the clone):
# 1. Stop browse daemons
pkill -f "gstack.*browse" 2>/dev/null || true
# 2. Remove per-skill directories whose SKILL.md points into gstack/
# (rm -rf, not rmdir — installed dirs also contain runtime-asset links)
find ~/.claude/skills -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d ! -name gstack 2>/dev/null |
while IFS= read -r dir; do
link="$dir/SKILL.md"
[ -L "$link" ] || continue
target=$(readlink "$link" 2>/dev/null) || continue
case "$target" in
gstack/*|*/gstack/*)
rm -rf "$dir"
;;
esac
done
# Alias skills install as copies (no symlink to detect) — remove by name
rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/_gstack-command ~/.claude/skills/connect-chrome 2>/dev/null
# 3. Remove gstack
rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/gstack
# 4. Remove global state
rm -rf ~/.gstack
# 5. Remove integrations (skip any you never installed)
rm -rf "${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/skills/gstack"* 2>/dev/null
rm -rf ~/.factory/skills/gstack* 2>/dev/null
rm -rf ~/.kiro/skills/gstack* 2>/dev/null
rm -rf ~/.openclaw/skills/gstack* 2>/dev/null
rm -rf ~/.cursor/skills/gstack* 2>/dev/null
rm -rf ~/.config/opencode/skills/gstack* 2>/dev/null
# 6. Remove temp files
rm -f /tmp/gstack-* 2>/dev/null
# 7. Per-project cleanup (run from each project root)
rm -rf .gstack .gstack-worktrees .claude/skills/gstack 2>/dev/null
rm -rf .agents/skills/gstack* .factory/skills/gstack* 2>/dev/null
Manual removal leaves gstack's hook entries behind in ~/.claude/settings.json
(the uninstall script removes all of them for you, including entries whose
_gstack_source tag was stripped). Edit that file and delete every hook whose
command path points into .claude/skills/gstack/: the SessionStart auto-update
hook, the AskUserQuestion PreToolUse/PostToolUse hooks, and the Stop hooks
(session timeline, plus verify-gate if you opted in). Left in place, they error
on every matching event once the install directory is gone.
Clean up CLAUDE.md
The uninstall script does not edit CLAUDE.md. In each project where gstack was added, remove the ## gstack and ## Skill routing sections.
Playwright
~/Library/Caches/ms-playwright/ (macOS) is left in place because other tools may share it. Remove it if nothing else needs it.
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.
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
Four paths, pick one:
- Supabase, existing URL — your cloud agent already provisioned a brain; paste the Session Pooler URL, now this laptop uses the same data.
- Supabase, auto-provision — paste a Supabase Personal Access Token; the skill creates a new project, polls to healthy, fetches the pooler URL, hands it to
gbrain init. ~90 seconds end-to-end. - PGLite local — zero accounts, zero network, ~30 seconds. Isolated brain on this Mac only. Great for try-first; migrate to Supabase later with
/setup-gbrain --switch. - Remote gbrain MCP — your brain runs on another machine (Tailscale, ngrok, internal LAN) or a teammate's server; paste an MCP URL and bearer token. Optionally pair with a local PGLite for symbol-aware code search in split-engine mode. Best for cross-machine memory without standing up a local DB.
After init, the skill offers to register gbrain as an MCP server for Claude Code (claude mcp add gbrain -- gbrain serve) so gbrain search, gbrain put, etc. show up as first-class typed tools — not bash shell-outs.
Keeping the brain current. Run /sync-gbrain from any repo to re-index its code into gbrain (incremental by default, --full for a full reindex, --dry-run to preview). The skill registers the cwd as a federated source via gbrain sources add, runs gbrain sync --strategy code, and writes a ## GBrain Search Guidance block to your project's CLAUDE.md so the agent prefers gbrain search/code-def/code-refs over Grep. The block is removed automatically if the capability check fails — no stale guidance pointing at tools that aren't installed.
Per-remote trust policy. Each repo on your machine gets one of three tiers:
read-write— agent can search the brain AND write new pages back from this reporead-only— agent can search but never writes (best for multi-client consultants: search the shared brain, don't contaminate it with Client A's work while in Client B's repo)deny— no gbrain interaction at all
The skill asks once per repo. The decision is sticky across worktrees and branches of the same remote.
GStack memory sync (different feature, same private-repo infra). Optionally pushes your gstack state (learnings, CEO plans, design docs, retros, developer profile) to a private git repo so your memory follows you across machines, with a one-time privacy prompt (everything allowlisted / artifacts only / off) and a defense-in-depth secret scanner that blocks AWS keys, tokens, PEM blocks, and JWTs before they leave your machine.
gstack-artifacts-init
Running gstack in Conductor? Conductor explicitly strips ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and OPENAI_API_KEY from every workspace's process env, so paid evals and gbrain embeddings won't work out of the box. Set GSTACK_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and GSTACK_OPENAI_API_KEY in Conductor's workspace env config instead — gstack's TS entry points promote them to canonical names at runtime. Full details and the contributor checklist for adding the import to new entry points: Conductor + GSTACK_* env vars.
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)
Docs
| Doc | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Skill Deep Dives | Philosophy, examples, and workflow for every skill (includes Greptile integration) |
| Diagrams & Document Formats | Mermaid/excalidraw fences in PDFs, image sizing and safety defaults, --to html|docx, /diagram triplets |
| Builder Ethos | Builder philosophy: Boil the Ocean, Search Before Building, three layers of knowledge |
| 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 Reference | Full command reference for /browse |
| Contributing | Dev setup, testing, contributor mode, and dev mode |
| Changelog | What's new in every version |
Privacy & Telemetry
gstack includes opt-in usage telemetry to help improve the project. Here's exactly what happens:
- Default is off. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you explicitly say yes.
- On first run, gstack asks if you want to share anonymous usage data. You can say no.
- What's sent (if you opt in): skill name, duration, success/fail, gstack version, OS. That's it.
- What's never sent: code, file paths, repo names, branch names, prompts, or any user-generated content.
- Change anytime:
gstack-config set telemetry offdisables everything instantly. - Every off-machine send is receipted. Any gstack-initiated network send — telemetry included — writes a hash-chained, tamper-evident receipt to
~/.gstack/security/egress.jsonlbefore the send; sensitive sinks refuse to send at all if the receipt can't be written. Audit withgstack-egress list, verify the chain withgstack-egress verify(exit 3 on tamper), see the standing consent settings withgstack-egress grants. The ledger records attempted sends so accidents are auditable — it's an audit trail, not a network firewall.
Data is stored in Supabase (open source Firebase alternative). The schema is in supabase/migrations/ — you can verify exactly what's collected. The Supabase publishable key in the repo is a public key (like a Firebase API key) — row-level security policies deny all direct access. Telemetry flows through validated edge functions that enforce schema checks, event type allowlists, and field length limits.
Local analytics are always available. Run gstack-analytics to see your personal usage dashboard from the local JSONL file — no remote data needed.
Troubleshooting
Skill not showing up? cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setup
/browse fails? cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && bun install && bun run build
Stale install? Run /gstack-upgrade — or set auto_upgrade: true in ~/.gstack/config.yaml
Want shorter commands? cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setup --no-prefix — switches from /gstack-qa to /qa. Your choice is remembered for future upgrades.
Want namespaced commands? cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setup --prefix — switches from /qa to /gstack-qa. Useful if you run other skill packs alongside gstack.
Codex says "Skipped loading skill(s) due to invalid SKILL.md"? Your Codex skill descriptions are stale. Fix: cd "${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/skills/gstack" && git pull && ./setup --host codex — or for repo-local installs: cd "$(readlink -f .agents/skills/gstack)" && git pull && ./setup --host codex
Windows users: gstack works on Windows 11 via Git Bash or WSL. 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.
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.
Claude says it can't see the skills? Make sure your project's CLAUDE.md has a gstack section. Add this:
## gstack
Use /browse from gstack for all web browsing. Never use mcp__claude-in-chrome__* tools.
Available skills: /office-hours, /plan-ceo-review, /plan-eng-review, /plan-design-review,
/design-consultation, /design-shotgun, /design-html, /review, /ship, /land-and-deploy,
/canary, /benchmark, /browse, /open-gstack-browser, /qa, /qa-only, /design-review,
/setup-browser-cookies, /setup-deploy, /setup-gbrain, /sync-gbrain, /retro, /investigate,
/document-release, /document-generate, /codex, /cso, /autoplan, /pair-agent, /careful, /freeze,
/guard, /unfreeze, /gstack-upgrade, /learn.
License
MIT. Free forever. Go build something.