Series Preface
“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 Karpathy said this, the AI coding world took notice. 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.
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. In the last 60 days: 600,000+ lines of production code (35% tests), 10,000-20,000 lines per day, part-time, while running YC full-time. This is how I do it.
Why gstack?
Most AI coding assistants share the same weakness: they rush to write code. When you describe what you want, the model often starts generating implementation immediately—without deeply understanding the real goal, considering design tradeoffs, or ensuring test coverage.
gstack is built on a simple idea: think before you code.
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.
The Sprint Workflow
flowchart LR
A[THINK] --> B[PLAN]
B --> C[BUILD]
C --> D[REVIEW]
D --> E[TEST]
E --> F[SHIP]
F --> G[REFLECT]
style A fill:#e3f2fd
style B fill:#e8f5e9
style C fill:#fff3e0
style D fill:#fce4ec
style E fill:#f3e5f5
style F fill:#e0f2f1
style G fill:#fff8e1
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.
The 23 Specialists
| Skill | Role | What They Do |
|---|---|---|
/office-hours |
YC Office Hours | Six forcing questions that reframe your product before you write code |
/plan-ceo-review |
CEO / Founder | Find the 10-star product hiding inside the request. Four scope modes. |
/plan-eng-review |
Eng Manager | Lock in architecture, data flow, diagrams, edge cases, and tests |
/plan-design-review |
Senior Designer | Rate each design dimension 0-10, catch AI slop, interactive review |
/plan-devex-review |
DX Lead | Developer personas, TTHW benchmarks, magical moment, friction points |
/design-consultation |
Design Partner | Build a complete design system from scratch |
/design-shotgun |
Design Explorer | Generate 4-6 AI mockup variants, comparison board, taste memory |
/design-html |
Design Engineer | Turn mockups into production HTML with Pretext computed layout |
/browse |
QA Engineer | Real Chromium browser, actual clicks, screenshots, ~100ms per command |
/open-gstack-browser |
Browser Launcher | GStack Browser with sidebar, anti-bot stealth, auto model routing |
/pair-agent |
Multi-Agent Coordinator | Share browser with any AI agent. Scoped tokens, tab isolation. |
/setup-browser-cookies |
Session Manager | Import cookies from Chrome/Arc/Brave/Edge |
/review |
Staff Engineer | Find bugs that pass CI but blow up in production. Auto-fixes. |
/codex |
Second Opinion | Independent code review from OpenAI Codex CLI |
/qa |
QA Lead | Test your app, find bugs, fix with atomic commits, re-verify |
/qa-only |
QA Reporter | Same as /qa but report only, no code changes |
/cso |
Chief Security Officer | OWASP Top 10 + STRIDE threat model. Zero-noise design. |
/design-review |
Designer Who Codes | Same audit as plan-design-review, then fixes what it finds |
/devex-review |
DX Tester | Live developer experience audit. Compare against plan scores. |
/ship |
Release Engineer | Sync main, run tests, audit coverage, push, open PR |
/land-and-deploy |
Release Engineer | Merge PR, wait for CI, deploy, verify production |
/canary |
SRE | Post-deploy monitoring for console errors, performance regression |
/benchmark |
Performance Engineer | Baseline page load, Core Web Vitals, before/after comparison |
/document-release |
Technical Writer | Update all docs to match what shipped |
/retro |
Eng Manager | Weekly retro with per-person breakdowns, shipping streaks |
/learn |
Memory | Manage what gstack learned across sessions |
/investigate |
Debugger | Systematic root-cause debugging. No fixes without investigation. |
/careful |
Safety Guardrails | Warn before destructive commands |
/freeze |
Edit Lock | Restrict edits to one directory |
/guard |
Full Safety | /careful + /freeze combined |
/unfreeze |
Unlock | Remove the freeze boundary |
/gstack-upgrade |
Self-Updater | Upgrade gstack to latest |
The 8 Power Tools
| Tool | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Real Browser Mode | /browse gives the agent eyes. Actual Chromium, actual clicks, actual screenshots. |
| GStack Browser | /open-gstack-browser launches branded browser with sidebar agent, anti-bot stealth. |
| Sidebar Agent | Natural language in Chrome side panel. Auto-routes Sonnet for actions, Opus for analysis. |
| Design Pipeline | /design-consultation → /design-shotgun → /design-html. Visual exploration to production HTML. |
| Security Audit | /cso runs OWASP Top 10 + STRIDE. Zero-noise with 8/10+ confidence gate. |
| Cross-Model Review | /codex gets second opinion from OpenAI. Cross-model analysis when both review. |
| Multi-Agent Coordination | /pair-agent shares browser between Claude Code, Codex, Hermes, etc. |
| Parallel Sprints | Run 10-15 Claude Code sessions simultaneously with Conductor. |
Tutorial Structure
This series contains 12 detailed tutorials, organized by sprint stage:
Getting Started
- Install & Setup — 30-second install, multi-platform support, team mode
- office-hours — YC-style product interrogation
- plan-ceo-review — Strategic scope challenge
Core Skills
- Plan Reviews — Engineering, DevEx, and Design plan reviews
- Design Pipeline — Visual exploration to production HTML
- Browser Testing — Real Chromium, sidebar agent
Quality & Ship
- Code Review — Staff engineer + cross-model second opinion
- QA & Security — Live testing + OWASP+STRIDE audits
- Release Engineering — /ship, /land-and-deploy, /canary
Advanced
- Design Review Live — Live UX/DX audit
- Docs & Retro — Documentation and retrospectives
- Parallel Sprints — 10-15 parallel workers with Conductor
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
- ✅ OpenClaw users — gstack works directly in OpenClaw agents
Prerequisites
- An active Claude subscription (for Claude Code)
- Git configured on your machine
- Bun v1.0+ installed
- Node.js (Windows only, for Playwright)
- Basic familiarity with your chosen AI coding assistant
How to Use This Series
- Read in order — skills build on each other
- Practice first — each tutorial includes hands-on examples
- Start with /office-hours — even if you skip setup, don’t skip product thinking
Platform Support
gstack works on 8 AI coding agents:
| Agent | Install Command |
|---|---|
| Claude Code | ./setup |
| OpenAI Codex CLI | ./setup --host codex |
| Cursor | ./setup --host cursor |
| OpenCode | ./setup --host opencode |
| Factory Droid | ./setup --host factory |
| Slate | ./setup --host slate |
| Kiro | ./setup --host kiro |
| OpenClaw | ClawHub marketplace |
Series navigation:
- → Next: Tutorial 1: Install & Setup
Repository: github.com/garrytan/gstack
Discussion: Share your gstack experience or ask questions in the comments!