Reproducing it

Install gstack on your machine in thirty seconds. The recommended first session. What to expect on day one.

This page is about installing the original garrytan/gstack on your machine. It is not about deploying this documentation site. See the project README for that.

Prerequisites

Claude Code

The official Anthropic CLI. Required.

Bun 1.0 or newer

Used to compile the browser binary at install time.

Git

Used for the install itself and by every shipping skill.

Install in thirty seconds

Paste this single command into your Claude Code session. Claude does the rest, including adding a routing section to your CLAUDE.md and listing the available skills.

One-liner

git clone --single-branch --depth 1 \
  https://github.com/garrytan/gstack.git \
  ~/.claude/skills/gstack \
  && cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack \
  && ./setup

The ./setup script verifies that Bun is installed, compiles the browser daemon and the designer binary, and symlinks every skill directory into your host’s skills path. On Windows it falls back to cp -R because plain symlinks silently go stale after git pull if Developer Mode is off.

The recommended first session

The README explicitly suggests starting with a five-step loop before deciding whether the system is for you.

1. Run /office-hours

   Describe what you are building. The skill will push back on your framing, run the six forcing questions, generate two or three implementation alternatives with effort estimates, and write a design doc to ~/.gstack/projects/<slug>/.

2. Run /plan-ceo-review on any feature idea

   The skill reads the design doc automatically. It will run the 11-section review, surface scope-expansion opportunities (you opt in to each one individually), and write a CEO plan if you chose Expansion or Selective Expansion mode.

3. Run /review on any branch with changes

   Pre-landing review. Auto-fixes mechanical issues directly. Batches ambiguous findings into one AskUserQuestion call. Should take 30 to 90 seconds for a small diff.

4. Run /qa on your staging URL

   Spins up the browser, explores the affected pages, finds bugs, fixes them with atomic commits, auto-generates regression tests, re-verifies. Stops automatically when the WTF-likelihood heuristic crosses 20 percent.

5. Stop there. You will know.

   The README’s exact instruction. Five commands is enough surface area to feel whether the system fits your workflow.

What gets created on disk

~/.claude/skills/gstack/

The cloned repo. Updated by /gstack-upgrade or by re-running ./setup.

~/.gstack/

The state directory. Stores config, sessions, analytics, projects, learnings, security state. Persistent across sessions.

<project>/.claude/

Per-project skill symlinks (only if you opted into team mode).

<project>/.context/

Per-project context for Conductor worktree handoffs.

Configuration

The user-level config file is ~/.gstack/config.yaml. Skills read it at startup. Set values via the gstack-config helper.

gstack-config examples

~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-config set proactive true
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-config set auto_upgrade true
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-config set telemetry community
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-config set checkpoint_mode continuous
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-config set skip_eng_review true
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-config list

proactive (default. true)

When true, gstack auto-invokes the right skill when your request matches one’s routing rule. Set to false if you prefer to type slash-commands manually.

telemetry (default. off)

Three values. off, anonymous, community. Off sends nothing. Anonymous sends counter-only stats with no device ID. Community sends usage data plus a stable device ID for cross-machine aggregation. Telemetry is opt-in and a one-time prompt asks on first run.

auto_upgrade (default. false)

When true, gstack silently upgrades itself at the start of each session if a new version is available. Otherwise the preamble surfaces an UPGRADE_AVAILABLE line and the user runs /gstack-upgrade.

checkpoint_mode (default. explicit)

When set to continuous, skills auto-commit work-in-progress with WIP: prefix and structured context. Survives crashes. /ship filter-squashes WIP commits before opening the PR.

skip_eng_review (default. false)

When true, /ship does not block on a missing engineering review. Useful for teams that have their own pre-merge gate.

Upgrading

Upgrade

# Either run the skill
/gstack-upgrade

# Or directly
cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && git pull && ./setup

The upgrade flow detects whether you have a global install (~/.claude/skills/gstack/) or a vendored install (<project>/.claude/skills/gstack/), syncs both if dual-installed, and prints the changelog.

Uninstalling

Uninstall

rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/gstack
rm -rf ~/.gstack

The first command removes the skill files. The second removes the state directory. If you only want to reset preferences, delete ~/.gstack/config.yaml and the marker files. The projects directory keeps your learnings and design docs intact.

What to read next

The 47-skill catalog

Every slash command with its persona and one-line job. The complete inventory.

The verbatim prompts

The exact instructions inside the biggest specialists.

The runtime mechanism

How a SKILL.md actually loads and executes.

The original repository

Browse the source. Read the CHANGELOG. File issues.