> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://prof-lee.zikun.me/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Overview

> Inside Garry Tan's open-source Claude Code setup. Forty-seven skills, the runtime mechanism, the pipeline that lets one person ship like a team.

<Note>
  An independent investigation of [`garrytan/gstack`](https://github.com/garrytan/gstack), the Claude Code configuration that the President and CEO of Y Combinator open-sourced in early 2026. Cloned and counted on 2026-05-17. The repository sits at roughly 98,000 GitHub stars and growing.
</Note>

## What gstack is

gstack is forty-seven `SKILL.md` files plus a 58 MB Bun-compiled browser daemon, packaged as a Claude Code configuration. Each skill is a slash-command. Together they turn Claude Code into a working engineering team. A CEO who rethinks the product, an engineering 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 and STRIDE audits, and a release engineer who ships the PR.

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="47 skills" icon="file-text">
    One top-level meta-skill at the repository root plus 46 sub-skill directories, each with its own `SKILL.md` file.
  </Card>

  <Card title="23 lifecycle specialists" icon="users">
    The roles a sprint runs through. Think, plan, design, build, review, test, ship, reflect.
  </Card>

  <Card title="8 power tools plus 16 supporting" icon="wrench">
    Safety guardrails, second opinions, deploy configurators, semantic memory, browser primitives, code-quality dashboards.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## How the system is built

Not a framework. Not a runtime. Not an agent. There is no Python or Node service running between the user and Claude. The system reduces to four parts.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Markdown prompts" icon="file-code" href="/runtime">
    Each skill is a `SKILL.md` file. YAML frontmatter plus a tuned prompt that Claude Code's native skill loader reads as a slash-command. The system's power comes from Opus 4.7 reading carefully authored prompts, not from code execution.
  </Card>

  <Card title="A state directory" icon="folder-tree" href="/pipeline">
    `~/.gstack/` is the substrate. Skills do not share runtime memory. They hand off through files. Design docs, plans, test plans, review logs, learnings, all live on disk so any future session can read them.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Bash glue" icon="terminal" href="/runtime">
    Roughly sixty helpers in `bin/` plus `PreToolUse` hooks that intercept destructive commands before Claude can run them.
  </Card>

  <Card title="A browser daemon" icon="globe" href="/architecture">
    A 58 MB Bun-compiled Playwright Chromium server shared by the QA, design-review, canary, and benchmark skills. First call costs about 3 seconds, every call after that runs in about 100 milliseconds.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## The claim under the system

> "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**."
>
> Garry Tan, gstack README

The methodology, caveats, and reproduction script live in [On the LOC Controversy](https://github.com/garrytan/gstack/blob/main/docs/ON_THE_LOC_CONTROVERSY.md).

## Read in order

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Architecture" icon="layers" href="/architecture">
    Repository layout, the browser daemon, multi-host install paths across ten AI coding agents.
  </Card>

  <Card title="The 47 Skills" icon="library" href="/skills">
    Every slash command by name, grouped by lifecycle phase.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Runtime mechanism" icon="cpu" href="/runtime">
    SKILL.md anatomy, the four-tier preamble, the hook system, cross-skill invocation, subagent dispatch.
  </Card>

  <Card title="The sprint pipeline" icon="git-branch" href="/pipeline">
    How skills chain through filesystem artifacts from design doc to deployed feature.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Verbatim prompts" icon="quote" href="/prompts">
    The six forcing questions, the eighteen patterns, the twenty steps, the fifteen phases.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Philosophy" icon="compass" href="/philosophy">
    Boil the Lake. The three layers of knowledge. The time-compression table.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Try it

```bash Install in thirty seconds theme={null}
git clone --single-branch --depth 1 \
  https://github.com/garrytan/gstack.git \
  ~/.claude/skills/gstack \
  && cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack \
  && ./setup
```

Then run `/office-hours` inside Claude Code. The full install walkthrough lives at [Reproducing it](/setup).