# GSD (Get Shit Done)

15 Hacker News commenters recommended GSD (Get Shit Done) and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for running multi-step AI coding work in phases with fresh context, so the context never needs compacting. Critics say it uses many tokens and suits only large projects.

## Why people recommend it

- Clears context between phases automatically (2 comments): "i agree that GSD is doing something more complete — full execution orchestration with context rotation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243905)) "it will launch everything as a phase and steps and clear context for you so you never compact" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031251))
- Builds large projects into working code (2 comments): "But it was the difference between "neat demo" and "111,000 lines of working Rust."" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47044478)) "one shot GSD in autonomous mode usually nails it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49507949))
- Praised as a useful framework (3 comments): "I do like GSD[1] though, it's been a great addition to the stack." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47046309)) "I have very much enjoyed GSD as a framework within claude code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48638648)) "GSD and spec-kit are great tools." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47061409))

## What people warn about

- Burns many tokens (4 comments): "GSD is great for new projects but it burns through tokes at quite the rate." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253235)) "GSD is quite OK but very token hungry" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49742094)) "they have too many stages and waste tokens" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47897291))
- Too much process for small projects (3 comments): "GSD was great but probably for gigantic projects only." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48233253)) "this is about 10,000x too much stuff for the equivalent feature set to a markdown file that your agent updates." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50039727)) "Over time GSD grown into beast which is suitable for huge + size projects only" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48422565))
- Loss of control over the agent (2 comments): "As time went on I felt like the organization was kind of an illusion." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746428)) "the control I initially felt over the model with all these markdown documents" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46694036))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Superpowers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/superpowers.md): 138 recommend
- [Claude Skills](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-skills.md): 59 recommend
- [grill-me skill by Matt Pocock](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grill-me-skill.md): 39 recommend
- [Get Shit Done](https://hackerapproved.com/p/get-shit-done.md): 31 recommend
- [Matt Pocock's skills](https://hackerapproved.com/p/matt-pocock-s-skills.md): 27 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "GSD (Get Shit Done)", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gsd/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).