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:
!GitHub contributions 2026 — 1,237 contributions, massive acceleration in Jan-Mar
2013 — when I built Bookface at YC (772 contributions):
!GitHub contributions 2013 — 772 contributions building Bookface at YC
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 (about 30 seconds of setup — 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 or an isolated local API, CLI, job or webhook - Stop there. You'll know if this is for you.
Install — about 30 seconds
./setup took 31 seconds after the clone on a 4-vCPU Linux cloud machine (v1.91.13.0, clean HOME, including the binary build and the Chromium download). Slower networks and laptops take longer.
Requirements: Claude Code, Git, Bun v1.4.2+ (the tested version; setup refuses Bun older than 1.3.3, which would let compiled tools read a project's .env, and warns in between), Node.js (Windows only). Recommended on macOS: the Aside browser (macOS 15+) — browser skills, /make-pdf, and /diagram drive it first, with your real logged-in sessions. Without it, ./setup builds gstack's own bundled browser and the same skills use that. /cso additionally needs a Bun release with all four --no-compile-autoload-* build flags plus a native toolchain: a static-capable C compiler on Linux, Xcode command-line tools on macOS, or Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with Desktop development with C++ on Windows. If those are absent, setup installs everything else, removes stale CSO helpers, and /cso reports not assessed with the prerequisite.
When qualified CSO runtime images are published, setup gives each automatic preload a 30-second window plus a bounded setup allowance for the declared catalog. For slower registries, set an integer such as GSTACK_CSO_IMAGE_PULL_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=120 (accepted range: 5–300 seconds). One image timing out does not consume the remaining images' windows; setup reports partial progress and a later run resumes from exact digests already present in local Docker. The complete preload is capped at one hour.
Step 1: Install on your machine
Open Claude Code and paste this. Claude does the rest.
Install gstack: run git clone --single-branch --depth 1 https://github.com/garrytan/gstack.git ~/.claude/skills/gstack && cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setup then add a "gstack" section to CLAUDE.md that says to use the /browse skill from gstack for all web browsing and never use mcp\_\_claude-in-chrome\_\_\* tools. Claude Code lists the installed skills itself, so the section needs no skill list. Then ask the user if they also want to add gstack to the current project so teammates get it.
Step 2: Team mode — auto-update for shared repos (recommended)
From inside your repo, paste this. Switches you to team mode, bootstraps the repo so teammates get gstack automatically, and commits the change:
(cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setup --team) && ~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-team-init required && git add .claude/ CLAUDE.md && git commit -m "require gstack for AI-assisted work"No vendored files in your repo, no version drift, no manual upgrades. Every Claude Code session starts with a fast auto-update check (throttled to once/hour, network-failure-safe, completely silent).
Swap required for optional if you'd rather nudge teammates than block them.
required blocks skills with a hook that runs on Node.js, so every teammate needs Node.js on PATH, on every OS. With Claude Code 2.1.295 or later the hook also blocks when it can't run (no Node.js, or a missing .claude/hooks/check-gstack.cjs); older Claude Code lets skills through in that case.
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 && ./setup to 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 runs on more agents than Claude. Bare ./setup installs for Claude
Code only. Pick another agent with --host , or install for every agent
setup detects on this machine with --host auto:
git clone --single-branch --depth 1 https://github.com/garrytan/gstack.git ~/gstack
cd ~/gstack && ./setup --host auto # or: ./setup --host codex
./setup --status # one row per install: host, tier, scope, version, pathAn explicit --host X installs for X only and never changes another agent's
install. /gstack-upgrade refreshes every install it registered, one row per
host, and says which ones failed.
A checkout carries skills only for the agents installed from it. Setup records
them in .gstack-installed-hosts and never drops one, so adding an agent later
is just ./setup --host . Copies rendered for other agents are pruned:
generated files move to ~/.gstack/backups/host-renders/, and files gstack
can't prove it generated stay where they are. A global Claude install went
from 632 SKILL.md files (34.7 MB) to its own 63 (2.5 MB), which keeps Cursor-agent
from freezing on the skills tree (#1694). In a development checkout,
bun run build still renders every agent; inside an install it renders the
recorded ones, and GSTACK_RENDER_HOSTS=all bun run build renders them all.
Tiers: full is certified by a real workflow run (see Certify your host); experimental installs and passes the conformance tests but has no certification run yet; instruction-only installs nothing: setup prints what to copy.
| Agent | Tier | Install | First invocation | Safety skills | Outside review needs | Repair |
|-------|------|---------|------------------|---------------|----------------------|--------|
| Claude Code | full | --host claude (default) | /office-hours | enforced (hooks block) | Codex CLI, signed in | ./setup --host claude |
| OpenAI Codex CLI | experimental | --host codex → ${CODEX_HOME:-~/.codex}/skills/gstack-*/ | ask for gstack-office-hours | advisory, not blocked | Claude Code CLI, signed in | ./setup --host codex |
| OpenCode | experimental | --host opencode → ~/.config/opencode/skills/gstack-/ + /gstack- commands | /gstack-office-hours | advisory, not blocked | Codex CLI, signed in | ./setup --host opencode |
| Cursor | experimental | --host cursor → ~/.cursor/skills/gstack-*/ | ask for gstack-office-hours | advisory, not blocked | Codex CLI, signed in | ./setup --host cursor |
| Factory Droid | experimental | --host factory → ~/.factory/skills/gstack-*/ | ask for gstack-office-hours | advisory, not blocked | Codex CLI, signed in | ./setup --host factory |
| Kiro | experimental | --host kiro → ~/.kiro/skills/gstack-*/ | ask for gstack-office-hours | advisory, not blocked | Codex CLI, signed in | ./setup --host kiro |
| GitHub Copilot CLI | experimental | --host copilot → ~/.copilot/skills/gstack-*/ | /gstack-office-hours | advisory, not blocked | Codex CLI, signed in | ./setup --host copilot |
| Antigravity CLI | experimental | --host agy (or --host antigravity) → ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/skills/gstack-*/ | /gstack-office-hours | advisory, not blocked | Codex CLI, signed in | ./setup --host agy |
| Slate | instruction-only | --host slate (points at the Claude install; Slate reads .claude/skills) | /office-hours via the Claude install | advisory, not blocked | — | ./setup --host claude |
| OpenClaw | instruction-only | --host openclaw (prints the digest path; ACP spawns Claude Code — docs/OPENCLAW.md) | "Load gstack. Run /review" | advisory, not blocked | — | re-copy the digest after upgrades |
| Hermes | instruction-only | --host hermes (prints the digest path and gen:skill-docs --host hermes) | copy the digest, or render skills yourself | advisory, not blocked | — | re-copy the digest after upgrades |
| GBrain (mod) | instruction-only | --host gbrain (brain-aware variants ship from the GBrain repo) | — | advisory, not blocked | — | — |
Copilot invokes gstack skills by their prefixed names (/gstack-review) because
/review is a Copilot built-in. Copilot ignores skill hooks, so /careful and
/freeze only advise there, and COPILOT_HOME other than ~/.copilot is not
supported yet (setup refuses and changes nothing).
Antigravity CLI also invokes skills by prefixed name (/gstack-review). Setup
writes only ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/skills/gstack*: Gemini CLI's
~/.gemini/skills and settings are never touched, and --host auto selects
Antigravity only when agy is on PATH or ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli exists,
never for a Gemini-CLI-only ~/.gemini. The Antigravity 2.0 app and IDE read
~/.gemini/config/skills, which this host does not install.
Outside reviews require the selected CLI to be installed and authenticated: Claude Code when using gstack in Codex, or Codex on other harnesses. External harnesses discover these commands as /gstack-claude-code and /gstack-codex; each harness omits its own wrapper. Explicit provider requests keep that provider. The existing codex_reviews setting controls automatic outside reviews where supported, regardless of the provider selected.
/claude has been renamed to /claude-code. Re-run ./setup --host to migrate managed installations, including other harnesses sharing the checkout. Setup preserves the previous installation if replacement generation or installation fails and prints repair instructions.
Instruction-only tier (any rules-reading agent — Zed, Amp, Jules, side projects):
copy the 2KB digest at agents-digest/gstack-AGENTS.md
into a location your agent reads (for example, append it to your project's AGENTS.md).
It carries gstack's ethos, reuse ladder, and voice rules — no install required. The
digest's first line shows its gstack version; re-copy it after upgrading.
For Codex, setup reads the top-level model from
${CODEX_HOME:-~/.codex}/config.toml and generates the matching behavioral
profile, falling back to gpt-6-astra when no usable model is configured.
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 — 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.
Plan-review and implementation tiers. Plan workflows use an independent
frontier reviewer: Fable 5.1 from Codex, or GPT-6 Astra from Claude Code.
Implementation handoffs recommend the smart tier: Opus 5.5 or GPT-6.1 Sol.
Choose a different tier, pin either provider's model, or use host mode to
preserve native model settings. The read-only gstack-models command explains
the effective choices; changing these settings does not require regenerating
skills or switch your running session. A weekly maintenance check flags changed
official recommendations and retirement notices without automatically changing
models. See model policy: setup, overrides and freshness.
Other Codex calls keep their existing selection. Without the explicit
plan-review role (including ordinary review and ship adversarial passes), gstack picks the model in this
order: a model you name for that request, then GSTACK_CODEX_MODEL, then
model in your Codex config.toml (for native codex review, review_model
first; a custom CODEX_HOME is honored), and only then gstack's default,
gpt-6-astra. Before spending anything, it prints the choice and where it came
from, for example CODEX_MODEL: gpt-5.6-terra (exec; source: ~/.codex/config.toml model).
If your choice is invalid or your account cannot use it, gstack stops with a
repair message and reports the outside review as unavailable. It never silently
switches to its default. Nested Codex reviews also run with installed skills
hidden (-c skills.include_instructions=false), so a review cannot turn into a
whole nested skill run. Runtime model selection is separate from the setup-time
behavioral profile above. Without the plan-review role, /claude-code (gstack-claude-code
on Codex) preserves Claude's configured model. Set GSTACK_CLAUDE_MODEL=
or name a model in your request to override it for the invocation, including
resumed consultations. See eval defaults and overrides
for capture, judge, and benchmark model selection.
The design binary ($D) uses OpenAI's gpt-5.5 by default, with image
generation through gpt-image-2. Set GSTACK_DESIGN_MODEL= to use
another gpt-5-class model for both image generation and screenshot analysis;
if OpenAI rejects it, the error names GSTACK_DESIGN_MODEL. Set
GSTACK_DESIGN_IMAGE_MODEL= to change the image tool model; a
value that is not a gpt-image model name is refused before any request. Check a
key against the defaults with bun run design/scripts/live-model-check.ts,
which always tests the default models and ignores both overrides; the weekly
periodic census runs the same check. Set OPENAI_BASE_URL to send every $D
call to an OpenAI-compatible gateway instead of api.openai.com; egress
receipts record the gateway host. On Codex, /design-shotgun generates mockups
with Codex's built-in $imagegen skill instead, so it needs no
OPENAI_API_KEY; $D still builds and serves the comparison board.
Want to add support for another agent? See docs/ADDING_A_HOST.md. Rendering a new agent is one TypeScript config file; installing it also needs a setup arm and the conformance kit, and it starts as experimental.
See it work
You: I want to build a daily briefing app for my calendar.
You: /office-hours
Claude: [asks about the pain — specific examples, not hypotheticals]
You: Multiple Google calendars, events with stale info, wrong locations.
Prep takes forever and the results aren't good enough...
Claude: I'm going to push back on the framing. You said "daily briefing
app." But what you actually described is a personal chief of
staff AI.
[extracts 5 capabilities you didn't realize you were describing]
[challenges 4 premises — you agree, disagree, or adjust]
[generates 3 implementation approaches with effort estimates]
RECOMMENDATION: Ship the narrowest wedge tomorrow, learn from
real usage. The full vision is a 3-month project — start with
the daily briefing that actually works.
[writes design doc → feeds into downstream skills automatically]
You: /plan-ceo-review
[reads the design doc, challenges scope, runs 10-section review]
You: /plan-eng-review
[ASCII diagrams for data flow, state machines, error paths]
[test matrix, failure modes, security concerns]
You: Approve plan. Exit plan mode.
[writes 2,400 lines across 11 files. ~8 minutes.]
You: /review
[AUTO-FIXED] 2 issues. [ASK] Race condition → you approve fix.
You: /qa https://staging.myapp.com
[opens real browser, clicks through flows, finds and fixes a bug]
You: /ship
Tests: 42 → 51 (+9 new). PR: github.com/you/app/pull/42
You said "daily briefing app." The agent said "you're building a chief of staff AI" — because it listened to your pain, not your feature request. Eight commands, end to end. That is not a copilot. That is a team.
The sprint
gstack is a process, not a collection of tools. The skills run in the order a sprint runs:
Think → Plan → Build → Review → Test → Ship → Reflect
Each skill feeds into the next. /office-hours writes a design doc that /plan-ceo-review reads. /plan-eng-review writes a test plan that /qa picks up. /review catches bugs that /ship verifies are fixed. Nothing falls through the cracks because every step knows what came before it.
| Skill | Your specialist | What they do |
|-------|----------------|--------------|
| /office-hours | YC Office Hours | Start here. Six forcing questions that reframe your product before you write code. Pushes back on your framing, challenges premises, generates implementation alternatives. Design doc feeds into every downstream skill. |
| /plan-ceo-review | CEO / Founder | Rethink the problem. Find the 10-star product hiding inside the request. Four modes: Expansion, Selective Expansion, Hold Scope, Reduction. |
| /plan-eng-review | Eng Manager | Lock in architecture, data flow, diagrams, edge cases, and tests. Forces hidden assumptions into the open. |
| /plan-design-review | Senior Designer | Rates each design dimension 0-10, explains what a 10 looks like, then edits the plan to get there. AI Slop detection. Interactive — one AskUserQuestion per design choice. |
| /plan-devex-review | Developer Experience Lead | Interactive DX review: explores developer personas, benchmarks against competitors' TTHW, designs your magical moment, traces friction points step by step. Scores error messages for the agents that read them (agent-ready errors). Three modes: DX EXPANSION, DX POLISH, DX TRIAGE. 20-45 forcing questions. |
| /design-consultation | Design Partner | Build a complete design system from scratch. Researches the landscape, proposes creative risks, generates realistic product mockups. Writes DESIGN.md in the open DESIGN.md format, so impeccable, Google Stitch, and any tool that reads it share one file. |
| /review | Staff Engineer | Find the bugs that pass CI but blow up in production. Auto-fixes the obvious ones. Flags completeness gaps and gate integrity: every weakened test, timeout, snapshot or suppression reaches a human by name. Advisory simplification lens flags over-built code — never blocks, never auto-applies. |
| /deslop-shared-libs | Shared Code Reviewer | Find worthwhile shared-code extractions in recent work. Compares up to five opportunities and recommends the best three, with source evidence, reliability gains, and total code savings. Recommendations only. |
| /test-audit | Test Auditor | Sweep existing tests for ones that cost more than they protect: source greps, duplicates, assertion-free probes, test-only exports. Every candidate carries an evidence card; report-only unless you approve a batch. |
| /investigate | Debugger | Systematic root-cause debugging. Iron Law: no fixes without investigation. Traces data flow, tests hypotheses, stops after 3 failed fixes. |
| /design-review | Designer Who Codes | Same audit as /plan-design-review, then fixes what it finds. Atomic commits, before/after screenshots. If you have impeccable installed, its engine runs first and every mechanical finding arrives tagged with its rule id. |
| /devex-review | DX Tester | Live developer experience audit. Actually tests your onboarding: navigates docs, tries the getting started flow, times TTHW, triggers CLI errors the way an agent meets them (gstack-error-capture: no terminal, contained, redacted). Compares against /plan-devex-review scores — the boomerang that shows if your plan matched reality. |
| /design-shotgun | Design Explorer | "Show me options." Generates 4-6 AI mockup variants, opens a comparison board in your browser, collects your feedback, and iterates. Taste memory learns what you like. Repeat until you love something, then hand it to /design-html. |
| /design-html | Design Engineer | Turn a mockup into production HTML that actually works. Pretext computed layout: text reflows, heights adjust, layouts are dynamic. 30KB, zero deps. Detects React/Svelte/Vue. Smart API routing per design type (landing page vs dashboard vs form). One slop-gate pass through the impeccable engine when you have it. The output is shippable, not a demo. |
| /qa | QA Lead | Explore browser, API, CLI, job and webhook behavior. Reproduce bugs, write failing regressions, fix the cause and re-verify before committing. |
| /qa-only | QA Reporter | Explore and report with replayable evidence. Suggest regression cases without changing product code or tests. |
| /pair-agent | Multi-Agent Coordinator | Share gstack's own browser with any AI agent. One command, one paste, connected. Works with OpenClaw, Hermes, Codex, Cursor, or anything that can curl. Each agent gets its own tab. Auto-launches headed mode so you watch everything. Auto-starts ngrok tunnel for remote agents. Scoped tokens, tab isolation, rate limiting, activity attribution. (Runs on the bundled browser — the fallback engine; agents driving Aside just open their own tabs.) |
| /cso | Chief Security Officer | Security audit with an application model, supported findings, independent challenge, and explicit coverage. Static assessment remains available without catalog profiles. With matching qualified profiles, comprehensive mode adds contained runtime/scanner execution and reviewable repair candidates for Node/Bun, Python, and Rails. Qualified runtime and scanner images are published for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64. Without Docker, audits run static assessment only. Runtime-tested bundles authenticate separate external assertions. Project-test completion remains self_reported because target code controls the test process; tested is reserved for a future target-independent completion witness. |
| /ship | Release Engineer | Sync main, run tests, explore changed behavior, audit coverage, gate integrity and docs, then verify, push and open a PR. |
| /land-and-deploy | Release Engineer | Merge the PR, wait for CI and deploy, verify production health. One command from "approved" to "verified in production." |
| /canary | SRE | Post-deploy monitoring loop. Watches for console errors, performance regressions, and page failures. |
| /benchmark | Performance Engineer | Baseline page load times, Core Web Vitals, and resource sizes. Compare before/after on every PR. |
| /eval-plan | Eval Planner | Preregister a paid eval before the first priced call: bars, arms, decoys and stop rules, a $0 stub-model dry run over the real inputs, and a three-item priced pilot whose extrapolation and spend table gate the approval. |
| /document-release | Technical Writer | Audit changed behavior against project docs on every ship, before final verification and publication. Also runs standalone. Shows updated, reviewed/current or blocked docs and any remaining gaps. |
| /document-generate | Documentation Author | Generate missing docs from scratch using the Diataxis framework. Researches the codebase first, then writes reference / how-to / tutorial / explanation docs that actually match the code. Invokable standalone or chained from /document-release when the coverage map finds gaps. Learn more: tutorial • how-to • why Diataxis. |
| /retro | Eng Manager | Team-aware weekly retro. Per-person breakdowns, shipping streaks, test health trends, growth opportunities. /retro global runs across all your projects and AI tools (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini). |
| /browse | QA Engineer | Give the agent eyes. Drives your Aside browser first — your real sessions, real clicks, real screenshots — through deterministic aside repl scripts. No Aside? It falls back to gstack's own Chromium: real clicks, ~100ms per command, and /open-gstack-browser shows it headed with sidebar, anti-bot stealth, and auto model routing. Every other browser skill stands on it. |
| /scrape | Data Extractor | Pull structured data off a web page — tables, lists, prices — in your Aside browser with the page's real logged-in state. On the fallback browser, /skillify turns the flow into a permanent browser-skill that runs in ~200ms next time. |
| /setup-browser-cookies | Session Manager | Copy selected cookies from Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Edge, Windows-only Opera and Opera GX, or macOS-only Comet, Arc, and Dia into gstack's bundled browser. Choose your profile and domains; copying and sign-in verification are separate. Only needed on the fallback path — Aside already has your sessions. |
| /autoplan | Review Pipeline | One command, fully reviewed plan. Runs CEO → design → DX → eng review automatically (eng always last, so the shipping gate reviews the final amended plan) with encoded decision principles. Surfaces only taste decisions for your approval. |
| /spec | Spec Author | Turn vague intent into a precise, executable spec in five phases (why, scope, technical with mandatory code-reading, draft, file). Outside-review quality gate before filing (Claude Code on Codex; Codex on other harnesses; blocks below 7/10), fail-closed secret redaction, dedupe against existing issues, archive to $GSTACK_STATE_ROOT/projects/$SLUG/specs/ for team-corpus recall. --execute spawns claude -p in a fresh worktree; /ship auto-closes the source issue on merge. Plan-mode aware. |
| /learn | Memory | Manage what gstack learned across sessions. Review, search, prune, and export project-specific patterns, pitfalls, and preferences. Learnings compound across sessions so gstack gets smarter on your codebase over time. |
| /make-pdf | Publisher | Markdown in, publication-quality document out. Mermaid and excalidraw fences render as vector diagrams, fully offline. Images scale to the page and never truncate; wide diagrams get their own landscape page. --to html emits one self-contained file, --to docx a Word doc. |
| /diagram | Diagram Maker | English in, editable diagram out. Emits a triplet: mermaid source, .excalidraw you can open and edit on excalidraw.com (hand-drawn style), and rendered SVG/PNG. Zero network. Embed the source in markdown and /make-pdf renders it. |
QA without a webpage
Use the same commands for browser and non-browser software. Start in a repository with its documented native command and an isolated local fixture; name the target and the behavior you want checked. For example:
/qa-only Test this repo's CLI using its documented local fixture. Check valid and invalid input, exit codes, stdout/stderr, and cancellation. Report only; do not change code or tests. For each finding, include the exact command, expected and actual results, and which checks remain untested. Keep requests inside the fixture; ask before contacting an external service.
/qa Test this repo's local webhook and worker fixture. Explore duplicate deliveries and recovery after a partial failure. Keep all effects inside the fixture; preserve reproduced bugs in native regression tests before repairing them.
QA first tells you which surface, tools and write permissions it will use. A CLI or API does not need a browser. Browser targets keep real browser testing; developer experience audits load only when onboarding, installation or ergonomics are in scope. If the native tools or safe fixture are unavailable, the report names the blocker and untested contracts instead of inventing a pass or installing another framework.
Exploration means learning from each result and choosing the next useful challenge,
not running random commands. Before the next discovery probe, QA saves a short
exploration-NNN.json evidence note with the previous result, the assumption being
tested and the next command. The final report links these notes; they do not require
an extra chat message between probes. A discovered bug must be reproducible, and its new test
must fail for the bug before the repair and pass afterward. Unit tests protect logic;
integration and end-to-end tests protect real boundaries that mocks would hide.
/qa-only proposes those tests without writing them.
Normal /review and /ship run a bounded version on changed behavior and nearby
risks automatically, including small diffs without a plan or web server. Existing
fix/test approval rules still apply. Missing dependencies, denied actions and time
limits remain visible coverage gaps; a short smoke pass never means exhaustive QA.
Production access and destructive or external effects require specific permission.
Bounded exploration uses an executable deadline guard, not an estimated clock: it refuses late probes and stops owned foreground work at the limit. Unfinished checks stay visible in the report. Required plan checks remain outside the review/ship smoke budget. See QA deadlines for command, platform and cleanup limits.
Every ship also runs the existing documentation audit, including repeat ships and existing PR updates. Clear factual corrections join the final checked change; risky rewrites need approval. A failed audit stops for recovery or explicit acceptance of the named risk rather than silently dropping its result. Ship owns versioning, Git and PR publication; the docs helper does not commit or push independently.
Which review should I use?
| Building for... | Plan stage (before code) | Live audit (after shipping) |
|-----------------|--------------------------|----------------------------|
| End users (UI, web app, mobile) | /plan-design-review | /design-review |
| Developers (API, CLI, SDK, docs) | /plan-devex-review | /devex-review |
| Architecture (data flow, perf, tests) | /plan-eng-review | /review |
| All of the above | /autoplan (runs CEO → design → DX → eng, auto-detects which apply; eng always last) | — |
Power tools
| Skill | What it does |
|-------|-------------|
| /codex | Second Opinion — independent code review from OpenAI Codex CLI. Review, challenge, and consult modes. Available on every harness except Codex. |
| /claude-code | Second Opinion — independent code review from Claude Code. Review, challenge, and consult modes, with session continuity for consultation. Available on every harness except Claude Code. |
| /careful | Safety Guardrails — warns before destructive commands (rm -rf, DROP TABLE, force-push). Say "be careful" to activate. Override any MEDIUM warning; root/home recursive deletes and default-branch force-pushes are hard-denied. |
| /freeze | Edit Lock — restrict file edits to one directory. Prevents accidental changes outside scope while debugging. |
| /guard | Full Safety — /careful + /freeze in one command. Maximum safety for prod work. |
| /unfreeze | Unlock — remove the /freeze boundary. |
| /open-gstack-browser | GStack Browser — launch gstack's own browser headed, with sidebar, anti-bot stealth, auto model routing (Sonnet for actions, Opus for analysis), one-click cookie import, and Claude Code integration. Clean up pages, take smart screenshots, edit CSS, and pass info back to your terminal. The visible face of the fallback engine; with Aside open you watch the agent's tabs there instead. |
| /setup-deploy | Deploy Configurator — one-time setup for /land-and-deploy. Detects your platform, production URL, and deploy commands. |
| /setup-gbrain | GBrain Onboarding — from zero to running gbrain in under 5 minutes. PGLite local, Supabase existing URL, or auto-provision a new Supabase project via Management API. MCP registration for Claude Code + per-repo trust triad (read-write/read-only/deny). Full guide. |
| /sync-gbrain | Keep Brain Current — re-index this repo's code into gbrain via gbrain sources add + gbrain sync --strategy code, refresh the ## GBrain Search Guidance block in CLAUDE.md, and auto-remove guidance when the capability check fails. --incremental (default), --full, --dry-run. Idempotent; safe to re-run. |
| /gstack-upgrade | Self-Updater — upgrade gstack to latest. Detects global vs vendored install, syncs both, shows what changed. |
| /ios-qa | iOS Live-Device QA (v1.43.0.0+) — drive a real iPhone or iPad over USB CoreDevice via an embedded StateServer in the app. Read Swift source, codegen typed @Observable accessors, run the agent loop. Optional --tailnet flag exposes the device to OpenClaw or any HTTP-capable agent on your Tailscale tailnet so remote agents can run iOS QA without ever touching the hardware. Capability-tier allowlist (observe/interact/mutate/restore), per-device session lock, audit log. |
| /ios-fix, /ios-design-review, /ios-clean, /ios-sync | iOS bug-fix loop, designer's-eye HIG audit, debug-bridge cleanup, and accessor resync. See docs/skills.md. End-to-end walkthrough: docs/howto-ios-testing-with-gstack.md. |
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 — 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: . 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-memorable | Memorable recall bridge (opt-in, third party, Claude Code only) — connects Claude Code to the external Memorable CLI through gstack instead of the vendor's own installer, so the hook gets gstack's guarantees: an explicit consent key (memorable_recall, off by default, listed by gstack-egress grants), a fail-closed egress receipt for every prompt handed over (gstack-egress list --sink memorable-recall), a HIGH-tier secret pre-scan, a trust envelope and 8 KiB cap on whatever comes back, an allowlisted environment and process-group containment for the vendor process, and clean removal. enable registers the hook at the stable install with a 5 s timeout and never runs the vendor's own consent command; disable revokes the gate first and removes the entry by identity even after Claude Code strips the tag; status is read-only. gstack never installs Memorable, and what its binary sends is the vendor's claim, not gstack's. Not available on Windows yet. Full guide. |
| 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-review-log | Review-pass receipts — --start captures the working-tree fingerprint before a diff review; ' consumes that single-use, repository/branch/skill-scoped receipt. Binding requires matching start/end content and reviewer-reported completed:true and converged:true; it is not independent proof that a model read the source. --check-shared-libs reads a current finding as JSON on stdin and checks prior Skip decisions against the actual branch, capture and eligible raw source blobs. It returns reusable:false when proof is missing or unsafe, including older records without logger-versioned coverage. Final review logging computes shared-code fingerprints and coverage rather than trusting supplied proof. |
| gstack-review-read | Review freshness — emits review records with computed review_freshness.status and reason: CURRENT, STALE, or UNVERIFIED for diff reviews. /ship and /land-and-deploy use the same grade; a matching commit alone never certifies a diff review. Dashboard rules. |
| gstack-evidence | Verification-evidence ledger — run --label 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 , 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 or iPad 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. |
The private paid CSO evaluation producer is a packaging contract, not an ordinary bun run build artifact. On macOS or Linux, a release operator compiles cso-eval-producer with the documented hardened Bun flags in the same clean build session as bun run build:cso, then installs it beside gstack-cso-launcher, gstack-cso-core, gstack-cso-watchdog, and the hidden .gstack-cso-generation manifest as one root-owned, nonwritable five-artifact unit. The producer rejects root execution, writable/symlinked/incomplete installations, and unreviewed provider CLI versions; each receipt binds all five artifact hashes, and collection rejects receipts from different unit identities. See the clean producer procedure. Paid producer evaluation remains unavailable on Windows because the detached watchdog has no Windows build.
Each producer gets a curated one-cell source copy with directories sealed to 0555 and files to 0444, plus pre/post content, Git, and mode checks. Claude receives no source add-directory, because an add-directory is a sandbox write root where Claude Code's bubblewrap leaves an empty .mcp.json mount point. Its Bash runs inside Claude Code's sandbox with one exception: the exact absolute launcher path that --allowed-tools names, which runs outside it as it does for users. The launcher is the boundary there. It replaces its environment with a fixed allowlist, uses only the local Docker Unix socket, and runs every target in hardened containers. The producer passes that policy through --settings (sandbox enabled, fail if unavailable, no unsandboxed fallback, no auto-allow, and excludedCommands naming only the launcher). It refuses to start the agent (CLAUDE_PRODUCER_SANDBOX_POLICY_MISMATCH) unless the generated arguments and environment carry exactly that policy. CLAUDE_CODE_SUBPROCESS_ENV_SCRUB stays unset, because it would force the launcher back into the sandbox. Every other Bash command is denied by --allowed-tools, and Write is confined to the provider work directory and cso-home. Gemini receives no source working directory or include-directory. Codex technically receives read-only filesystem access to the exact curated source root because the trusted helper inherits the Codex permission profile; its private provider work directory and exact cso-home artifact directory are the only write roots, every other root path remains denied, and the producer prompt requires source access through the helper. This is evaluation containment for an immutable public fixture, not a claim that Codex cannot directly read that fixture.
Copy each completed cell's receipt together with state/cso-home/security/cso/ to the trusted adjudication host. Receipt entries are sorted paths relative to that directory and bind every retained file's size and SHA-256 plus an aggregate inventory hash. Provider homes, settings, sessions, and credentials live under separate disposable directories and are removed after the cell; they are never part of the retained artifact tree. The adjudicator must re-hash the transported tree against the receipt before trusting reports or repair bundles.
Paid producer qualification uses this explicit host matrix:
| Producer host | Daily/static cells | Comprehensive target execution | |---|---|---| | Codex CLI 0.153.4 | Supported under the custom permission profile | Fails closed because Docker/socket access is not granted to the model command sandbox; report the setup gap as partial | | Claude Code 2.1.263 | Supported under restricted safe mode | Fails closed when the restricted launcher child cannot re
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