* feat(setup-gbrain): add gstack-gbrain-repo-policy bin helper Per-remote trust-tier store for the forthcoming /setup-gbrain skill. Tiers are the D3 triad (read-write / read-only / deny), keyed by a normalized remote URL so ssh-shorthand and https variants collapse to the same entry. The file carries _schema_version: 2 (D2-eng); legacy `allow` values from pre-D3 experiments auto-migrate to `read-write` on first read, idempotent, with a one-shot log line. Pure bash + jq to match the existing gstack-brain-* family. Atomic writes via tmpfile + rename. Policy file mode 0600. Corrupt files quarantine to .corrupt-<ts> and start fresh. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * test(setup-gbrain): unit tests for gstack-gbrain-repo-policy 24 tests covering normalize (ssh/https/shorthand/uppercase collapse to one key), set/get round-trip, all three D3 tiers accepted, invalid tiers rejected, file mode 0600, _schema_version field written on fresh files, legacy allow migration (including idempotence and preservation of non-allow entries), corrupt-JSON quarantine + fresh-file recovery, list output sorting, and get-without-arg auto-detect against a git repo with no origin. All tests green against a per-test tmpdir GSTACK_HOME so nothing leaks into the real ~/.gstack. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * feat(setup-gbrain): add gstack-gbrain-detect state reporter Pure-introspection JSON emitter for the /setup-gbrain skill's start-up branching. Reports: gbrain presence + version on PATH, ~/.gbrain/config.json existence + engine, `gbrain doctor --json` health (wrapped in timeout 5s to match the /health D6 pattern), gstack-brain-sync mode via gstack-config, and ~/.gstack/.git presence for the memory-sync feature. Never modifies state. Always emits valid JSON even when every check is false. Handles malformed ~/.gbrain/config.json without crashing — gbrain_engine is null in that case, not an error. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * feat(setup-gbrain): add gstack-gbrain-install with D5 detect-first + D19 PATH-shadow guard Clones gbrain at a pinned commit (v0.18.2) and registers it via `bun link`. Before any clone: D5 detect-first — probes ~/git/gbrain, ~/gbrain, and the install target for a valid pre-existing clone (package.json with name "gbrain" and bin.gbrain set). If one is found, `bun link` runs there instead of cloning a second copy. Prevents the day-one duplicate-install footgun on the skill author's own machine. After install: D19 PATH-shadow guard — reads the install-dir's package.json version, compares to `gbrain --version` on PATH. On mismatch: exits 3, prints every gbrain binary on PATH via `type -a`, and gives a remediation menu. Setup skills refuse broken environments instead of warning and continuing. Prereq checks (bun, git, https://github.com reachability) fail fast with install hints. --dry-run and --validate-only flags let the skill probe the plan without touching state; tests use them to cover D5 and D19 without exercising real bun link. Pin is a load-bearing version: setup-gbrain v1 verified against gbrain v0.18.2. Updating requires re-running Pre-Impl Gate 1 to verify gbrain's CLI + config shapes haven't drifted. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * test(setup-gbrain): unit tests for gstack-gbrain-detect + install 15 tests covering: detect emits valid JSON when nothing configured, reports gstack_brain_git on GSTACK_HOME/.git presence, reads ~/.gbrain/config.json engine, tolerates malformed config, detects a mocked gbrain binary on PATH with version parsing. For install: D5 detect-first uses ~/git/gbrain fixtures under a sandboxed HOME, verifies fall-through to fresh clone when no valid clone exists, rejects invalid package.json shapes. D19 PATH-shadow validation uses a fake gbrain on a minimal SAFE_PATH to simulate version mismatch, same-version-pass, v-prefix tolerance, missing binary on PATH, and missing version field in package.json. --validate-only mode in the install bin makes the D19 check unit- testable without running real bun link (which touches ~/.bun/bin). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * feat(setup-gbrain): add gstack-gbrain-lib.sh with read_secret_to_env (D3-eng) Shared secret-read helper for PAT (D11) and pooler URL paste (D16). One implementation of the hardest-to-get-right pattern: stty -echo + SIGINT/TERM/EXIT trap that restores terminal mode, read into a named env var, optional redacted preview. Validates the target var name against [A-Z_][A-Z0-9_]* to prevent bash name-injection via `read -r "$varname"`. When stdin is not a TTY (CI, piped tests) the stty branches skip cleanly — piped input doesn't echo anyway. Exports the var after read so subprocesses inherit it; callers own the `unset` at handoff time. Sourced, not executed — no +x bit. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * feat(setup-gbrain): add gstack-gbrain-supabase-verify structural URL check Zero-network validator for Supabase Session Pooler URLs before handing them to `gbrain init`. Canonical shape verified per gbrain init.ts:266: postgresql://postgres.<ref>:<password>@aws-0-<region>.pooler.supabase.com:6543/postgres Rejects direct-connection URLs (db.*.supabase.co:5432) with a distinct exit code 3 and clear IPv6-failure remediation — that's the most common paste mistake users make, so it earns its own UX path rather than a generic "bad URL" error. Never echoes the URL (contains a password) in error messages; tests verify a distinct seed password never appears in stderr on any reject path. Accepts URL from argv[1] or stdin ("-" or no arg). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * test(setup-gbrain): unit tests for supabase-verify + lib.sh secret helper 22 tests. verify: accepts canonical pooler URL (argv + stdin modes), rejects direct-connection URL with exit 3, rejects wrong scheme, wrong port, empty password, missing userinfo, plain 'postgres' user (catches direct-URL paste errors), wrong host, empty URL. Case-insensitive host match. Explicit negative: error messages never echo the URL password. lib.sh read_secret_to_env: reads piped stdin into the named env var, exports to subprocesses, redacted-preview emits masked form on stderr with the seed password absent, rejects invalid var names (lowercase, leading digit, hyphens), rejects missing/unknown flags, secret value never appears on stdout. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * feat(setup-gbrain): add gstack-gbrain-supabase-provision Management API wrapper Four subcommands: list-orgs, create, wait, pooler-url. Built against the verified Supabase Management API shape (Pre-Impl Gate 1): - POST /v1/projects with {name, db_pass, organization_slug, region} — not the original plan's /v1/organizations/{ref}/projects - No `plan` field; subscription tier is org-level per the OpenAPI description ("Subscription Plan is now set on organization level and is ignored in this request") - GET /v1/projects/{ref}/config/database/pooler for pooler config — not /config/database Secrets discipline: SUPABASE_ACCESS_TOKEN (PAT) and DB_PASS read from env only, never from argv (D8 grep test enforces this). `set +x` at the top as a defensive default so debug tracing never leaks secrets. Management API hostname hardcoded to SUPABASE_API_BASE env override — no user-controlled URL portion (SSRF guard). HTTP error paths: 401/403 → exit 3 (auth), 402 → 4 (quota), 409 → 5 (conflict), 429 + 5xx → exponential-backoff retry up to 3 attempts, then exit 8. Wait subcommand polls every 5s until ACTIVE_HEALTHY with a configurable timeout; terminal states (INIT_FAILED, REMOVED, etc.) exit 7 immediately with a clear message. Timeout emits the --resume-provision hint so the skill can recover. Pooler-url constructs the URL locally from db_user/host/port/name + DB_PASS rather than trusting the API response's connection_string field, which is templated with [PASSWORD] rather than the real value. Handles both object and array response shapes, preferring session pool_mode when Supabase returns multiple pooler configs. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * test(setup-gbrain): unit tests for gstack-gbrain-supabase-provision via mock API 22 tests covering D21 HTTP error suite (401/403/402/409/429/5xx) and happy paths for all four subcommands. Every test spins up a Bun.serve mock server bound to SUPABASE_API_BASE so nothing hits the real API. Uses Bun.spawn (async) rather than spawnSync because spawnSync blocks the Bun event loop, which prevents Bun.serve mocks from responding — calls would hit curl's own timeout instead of round-tripping. Verifies: POST body contains organization_slug (not organization_id) and no `plan` field, bearer-token auth header, retry-on-429 with eventual success, exit-8 on persistent 5xx after max retries, wait succeeds on ACTIVE_HEALTHY, exits 7 on INIT_FAILED, exits 6 with --resume-provision hint on timeout, pooler-url builds URL locally from db_user/host/port/name + DB_PASS (not response connection_string template), handles array pooler responses. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * feat(setup-gbrain): add SKILL.md.tmpl — user-facing skill prompt Stitches together every slice built so far (repo-policy, detect, install, lib.sh secret helper, supabase-verify, supabase-provision) into a single interactive flow. Paths: Supabase existing-URL, Supabase auto-provision (D7), Supabase manual, PGLite local, switch (PGLite ↔ Supabase via gbrain migrate wrapped in timeout 180s per D9). Secrets discipline per D8/D10/D11: PAT + DB_PASS + pooler URL all read via read_secret_to_env from lib.sh and handed to gbrain via GBRAIN_DATABASE_URL env, never argv. PAT carries the full D11 scope disclosure before collection and an explicit revocation reminder after success. D12 SIGINT recovery prints the in-flight ref + resume command. D18 MCP registration is scoped honestly to Claude Code — skips with a manual-register hint when `claude` is not on PATH. D6 per-remote trust-triad question (read-write/read-only/deny/skip-for-now) gates repo import; the triad values compose with the D2-eng schema-version policy file so future migrations stay deterministic. Skill runs concurrent-run-locked via mkdir ~/.gstack/.setup-gbrain.lock.d (atomic, same pattern as gstack-brain-sync). Telemetry (D4) payload carries enumerated categorical values only — never URL, PAT, or any postgresql:// substring. --repo, --switch, --resume-provision, --cleanup-orphans shortcut modes documented inline; the skill parses its own invocation args. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * feat(health): integrate gbrain as D6 composite dimension Adds a GBrain row to the /health dashboard rubric with weight 10%. Three sub-signals rolled into one 0-10 score: doctor status (0.5), sync queue depth (0.3), last-push age (0.2). Redistributes when gbrain_sync_mode is off so the dimension stays fair. Weights rebalance: typecheck 25→22, lint 20→18, test 30→28, deadcode 15→13, shell 10→9, gbrain +10 — sums to 100. gbrain doctor --json wrapped in timeout 5s so a hung gbrain never stalls the /health dashboard. Dimension is omitted (not red) when gbrain is not installed — running /health on a non-gbrain machine shouldn't penalize that choice. History-JSONL adds a `gbrain` field. Pre-D6 entries read as null for trend comparison; new tracking starts from first post-D6 run. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * feat(test): add secret-sink-harness for negative-space leak testing (D21 #5) Runs a subprocess with a seeded secret, captures every channel the subprocess could leak through, and asserts the seed never appears. Built per the D1-eng tightened contract: per-run tmp $HOME, four seed match rules (exact + URL-decoded + first-12-char prefix + base64), fd-level stdout/stderr capture via Bun.spawn, post-mortem walk of every file written under $HOME, separate buckets for telemetry JSONL. Reusable: any future skill that handles secrets can import runWithSecretSink and run positive/negative controls against its own bins. The harness itself is ~180 lines of TS with no external deps beyond Bun + node:fs. Out of scope for v1 (documented as follow-ups): subprocess env dump (portable /proc reading), the user's real shell history (bins don't modify it). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * test: secret-sink harness positive controls + real-bin negative controls 11 tests. Positive controls deliberately leak a seed in every covered channel (stdout, stderr, a file under $HOME, the telemetry JSONL path, base64-encoded, first-12-char prefix) and assert the harness catches each one. Without these, a harness that silently under-reports would look identical to a harness that works. Negative controls run real setup-gbrain bins with distinctive seeds: - supabase-verify rejects a mysql:// URL and a direct-connection URL, password never appears in any captured channel - lib.sh read_secret_to_env reads piped stdin, emits only the length, seed value stays invisible - supabase-provision on an auth-failure path fails fast without leaking the PAT to any channel Covers D21 #5 leak harness + uses it to validate D3-eng, D10, D11 discipline end-to-end on the already-shipped bins. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * feat(setup-gbrain): add list-orphans + delete-project subcommands (D20) Powers /setup-gbrain --cleanup-orphans. list-orphans filters the authenticated user's Supabase projects by name prefix (default "gbrain") and excludes the project the local ~/.gbrain/config.json currently points at, so only unclaimed gbrain-shaped projects come back. Active-ref detection parses the pooler URL's user portion (postgres.<ref>:<pw>@...). delete-project is a thin DELETE /v1/projects/{ref} wrapper with no confirmation of its own — the skill's UI layer owns the per-project confirm AskUserQuestion loop. Keeps responsibilities clean: the bin manages HTTP; the skill manages user intent. Both subcommands reuse the existing api_call retry+backoff and the same PAT discipline (env only, never argv). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * test(setup-gbrain): list-orphans active-ref filtering + delete-project 404 6 new tests bringing the supabase-provision suite to 28: list-orphans: - Filters to gbrain-prefixed projects, excludes the active-ref derived from ~/.gbrain/config.json's pooler URL - Treats all gbrain-prefixed projects as orphans when no config exists (first run on a new machine) - Respects custom --name-prefix for users who named their brain something else delete-project: - Happy path sends DELETE /v1/projects/<ref> and returns {deleted_ref} - 404 surfaces cleanly (exit 2, "404" in stderr) - Missing <ref> positional rejected with exit 2 Uses per-test tmpdir HOME with a stubbed ~/.gbrain/config.json so active-ref extraction runs against deterministic fixtures. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * chore: regenerate setup-gbrain SKILL.md after main merge * chore: bump version and changelog (v1.12.0.0) Ships /setup-gbrain and its supporting infrastructure end-to-end: per-remote trust policy, installer with PATH-shadow guard, shared secret-read helper, structural URL verifier, Supabase Management API wrapper, /health GBrain dimension, secret-sink test harness. 100 new tests across 5 suites, all green. Three pre-existing test failures noted as P0 in TODOS.md. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * docs: add USING_GBRAIN_WITH_GSTACK.md + update README for /setup-gbrain README changes: - Rewrote the "Cross-machine memory with GBrain sync" section into "GBrain — persistent knowledge for your coding agent." Covers the three /setup-gbrain paths (Supabase existing URL, auto-provision, PGLite local), MCP registration, per-remote trust triad, and the (still-separate) memory sync feature. - Added /setup-gbrain row to the skills table pointing at the full guide. - Added /setup-gbrain to both skill-list install snippets. - Added USING_GBRAIN_WITH_GSTACK.md to the Docs table. New doc (USING_GBRAIN_WITH_GSTACK.md): - All three setup paths with trust-surface caveats - MCP registration details (and honest Claude-Code-v1 scoping) - Per-remote trust triad semantics + how to change a policy - Switching engines (PGLite ↔ Supabase) via --switch - GStack memory sync + its relationship to the gbrain knowledge base - /setup-gbrain --cleanup-orphans for orphan Supabase projects - Full command + flag reference, every bin helper, every env var - Security model: what's enforced in code, what's enforced by the leak harness, and the honest limits of v1 - Troubleshooting: PATH shadowing, direct-connection URL reject, auto-provision timeout, stale lock, policy file hand-edits, migrate hang - Why-this-design section explaining the non-obvious choices Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * fix(brain-sync): secret scanner now catches Bearer-prefixed auth tokens in JSON The bearer-token-json regex value charset was [A-Za-z0-9_./+=-]{16,}, which does NOT permit spaces. Real HTTP auth headers embed the scheme name with a literal space — "Bearer <token>" — so the value portion actually starts with "Bearer " and the existing regex couldn't match. Result: any JSON blob containing "authorization":"Bearer ..." would slip past the scanner and sync to the user's private brain repo with the bearer token inline. Added optional (Bearer |Basic |Token )? prefix in front of the value charset. Now matches the common auth-scheme forms without broadening the matcher to tolerate arbitrary whitespace (which would false-positive on lots of benign JSON). Verified against 5 positive cases (bearer-in-json, clean bearer, apikey no-prefix, token with Bearer, password no-prefix) + 3 negative cases (too-short tokens, non-secret field names like username, random JSON). This closes the P0 security regression first noticed during v1.12.0.0 /ship. brain-sync.test.ts now passes all 7 secret-scan fixtures. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * test: mock-gh integration tests for gstack-brain-init auto-create path 8 tests covering the gh-repo-create happy path that had zero coverage before. Existing brain-sync.test.ts always passes --remote <bare-url> to bypass gh entirely, so the interactive default ("press Enter, we'll run gh repo create for you") was shipping on trust. Test strategy: write a bash stub for gh that records every call into a file, then run gstack-brain-init with that stub on PATH. Assertions verify: gh auth status is checked, gh repo create fires with the computed gstack-brain-<user> default name + --private + --source flags, fall-through to gh repo view when create reports already-exists, user-provided URL bypasses gh entirely, gh-not-on-path and gh-not-authed branches both prompt for URL, --remote flag short-circuits all gh calls, conflicting-remote re-runs exit 1 with a clear message. No real GitHub, no live auth. Gate tier — runs on every commit. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * test(e2e): privacy-gate AskUserQuestion fires from preamble (periodic tier) Two periodic-tier E2E tests exercising the preamble's privacy gate end-to-end via the Agent SDK + canUseTool. Previously uncovered: - Positive: stages a fake gbrain on PATH + gbrain_sync_mode_prompted=false in config, runs a real skill, intercepts tool-use. Asserts the preamble fires a 3-option AskUserQuestion matching the canonical prose ("publish session memory" / "artifact" / "decline") and does NOT fire a second time in the same run (idempotency within session). - Negative: same staging but prompted=true. Asserts the gate stays silent even with gbrain detected on the host. Registered in test/helpers/touchfiles.ts as `brain-privacy-gate` (periodic) with dependency tracking on generate-brain-sync-block.ts, the three gstack-brain-* bins, gstack-config, and the Agent SDK runner. Diff-based selection re-runs the E2E when any of those change. Cost: ~$0.30-$0.50 per run. Only fires under EVALS=1 EVALS_TIER=periodic; gate tier stays free. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * docs: update TODOS for bearer-json fix + new brain-sync test coverage Moves the bearer-json secret-scan regression from the P0 "pre-existing failures" block into the Completed section with full context on the fix, the mock-gh tests, the E2E privacy-gate tests, and the touchfile registration. Remaining P0s are the GSTACK_HOME config-isolation bug and the stale Opus 4.7 overlay pacing assertion, both unrelated. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * fix(test): E2E privacy gate — ambient env + skill-file prompt Two fixes to get the E2E actually running end-to-end (first attempt failed at the SDK auth step, second at the assertion step): 1. Don't pass an explicit `env:` object to runAgentSdkTest. The SDK's auth pipeline misses ANTHROPIC_API_KEY when env is supplied as an object (verified against the plan-mode-no-op test, which passes no env and auths cleanly). Mutate process.env before the call instead, and restore the originals in finally so other tests don't inherit the ambient mutation. 2. The "Run /learn with no arguments" user prompt was too narrow — the model reduced it to a direct action and skipped the preamble privacy-gate directives entirely, so zero AskUserQuestions fired. Mirror the plan-mode-no-op pattern: point the model at the skill file on disk and ask it to follow every preamble directive. Bumped maxTurns from 6 to 10 to give the preamble room to execute. Verified both tests pass under `EVALS=1 EVALS_TIER=periodic bun test test/skill-e2e-brain-privacy-gate.test.ts` against a real ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. Cost per run: ~$0.30-$0.50 per test. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> * docs(CLAUDE.md): source ANTHROPIC/OPENAI keys from ~/.zshrc for paid evals Conductor workspaces don't inherit the interactive shell env, so both API keys are absent from the default process env even though they're set in ~/.zshrc. Documents the source-from-zshrc pattern (grep + eval, never echo the value) plus the Agent SDK gotcha: do NOT pass env as an object to runAgentSdkTest — mutate process.env ambiently and restore in finally. Discovered this during the brain-privacy-gate E2E. First run failed at SDK auth with 401; second failed because explicit env handoff bypassed the SDK's own auth routing. Fix pattern now codified so the next paid-eval session in a Conductor workspace doesn't hit the same two dead ends. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> --------- Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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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, /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/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-*/ |
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. |
/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. |
/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. |
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 warning. |
/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. |
/gstack-upgrade |
Self-Updater — upgrade gstack to latest. Detects global vs vendored install, syncs both, shows what changed. |
New binaries (v0.19)
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. |
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.
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: a 22MB ML classifier bundled with the browser scans every page and tool output locally, a Claude Haiku transcript check votes on the full conversation shape, a random canary token in the system prompt catches session exfil attempts across text, tool args, URLs, and file writes, and a verdict combiner requires two classifiers to agree before blocking (prevents single-model false positives on Stack Overflow-style instruction pages). A shield icon in the sidebar header shows status (green/amber/red). Opt in to a 721MB DeBERTa-v3 ensemble via GSTACK_SECURITY_ENSEMBLE=deberta for 2-of-3 agreement. 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 symlinks pointing into gstack/
find ~/.claude/skills -maxdepth 1 -type l 2>/dev/null | while read -r link; do
case "$(readlink "$link" 2>/dev/null)" in gstack/*|*/gstack/*) rm -f "$link" ;; esac
done
# 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/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
# 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
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
Three 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.
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_page, etc. show up as first-class typed tools — not bash shell-outs.
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-brain-init
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) |
| Builder Ethos | Builder philosophy: Boil the Lake, 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.
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/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.
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, /retro, /investigate, /document-release,
/codex, /cso, /autoplan, /pair-agent, /careful, /freeze, /guard, /unfreeze, /gstack-upgrade, /learn.
License
MIT. Free forever. Go build something.

