gstack by Garry Tan
Shares rank 13 of 23 agent skills by recommenders
People recommend it as a set of Claude Code skills and browser tooling that speeds up development and improves code quality, though critics say it is token-heavy and overhyped.
People recommend it as a set of Claude Code skills and browser tooling that speeds up development and improves code quality, though critics say it is token-heavy and overhyped.
29 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 48%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Faster, higher-quality development
“Dramatically improved code quality and speed of development for me.”
Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “gstack – Garry Tan's Claude Code Setup” “GStack is a brilliant setup for maximizing Claude Code's velocity.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “gstack – Garry Tan's Claude Code Setup” “created 10x productivity gain for me”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “Geosql: A Claude/Codex skill for geospatial data” - Comment from 6 May 2026 in “Herd – a lightweight multi-agent IDE, built with GStack”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hype and self-promotion
“Pretty funny boasting about accelerated results, when his public contributions are only in two repositories”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?” “AIs suck up to you and constantly tell you your work is brilliant and of course it's revolutionary.”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: Are you too getting addicted to the dev workflow of coding with agents?” “I found the Garry Tan's gstack README to be too linkedin-ey”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “Translate Garry Tan's LinkedIn-speak to plain English” - Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “YC CEO says he ships 37K LoC/day AI code. A developer looked under the hood”
- Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated”
- Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “qm”
Overkill, token-heavy, clutters context
“the CEO plan mode in the repo is interesting (although very token heavy)”
Comment from 17 Mar 2026 in “Garry Tan's Claude Code Setup” “I find that its usually overkill for many things”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance” “It just unnecessarily clutters the context, in EVERY single skill.”
Comment from 17 Mar 2026 in “Garry Tan's Claude Code Setup” Produces low-quality, sloppy output
“producing 'functional slop' that has little bearing on how anything else would be made”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “YC CEO says he ships 37K LoC/day AI code. A developer looked under the hood” “hundreds of thousands of the worst quality slop you can imagine”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “543 Hours: What happens when AI runs while you sleep” “a Winchester Mystery House constructed mostly from Markdown”
Comment from 4 Apr 2026 in “The Cathedral, the Bazaar, and the Winchester Mystery House” - Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “YC CEO says he ships 37K LoC/day AI code. A developer looked under the hood”
Other agent skills people recommend
The four most recommended other agent skills, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Superpowers | 138 | 72 | 66% | 12 | 4 mo7 owners | — |
| Claude Skills | 59 | 26 | 69% | 11 | — | Approved |
| grill-me skill by Matt Pocock | 39 | 2 | 95% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Get Shit Done | 31 | 32 | 49% | 7 | — | — |
| gstack by Garry TanThis page | 14 | 15 | 48% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
31 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I find that its usually overkill for many things”
“breathless faddishness of celebrity news”
“inflict psychosis chasing correlations that don't mean anything”
“created 10x productivity gain for me”
“It's another to create hype on top of nonsense.”
“producing 'functional slop' that has little bearing on how anything else would be made”
“it's still a pile of steaming garbage”
“You don't even need gstack.”
“comes with shared memory, so each session has access to another's state if needed”
“I sort of "discovered" skills via GStack and now use a few things”
“We got a lot of use out of it”
“hundreds of thousands of the worst quality slop you can imagine”
“The gstack is also pretty interesting.. well, not really”
“a Winchester Mystery House constructed mostly from Markdown”
“AIs suck up to you and constantly tell you your work is brilliant and of course it's revolutionary.”
“I found that gstack's /office_hours to be good about encouraging, while being firm.”
“Noone seems to have mentioned that Gstack has "Telemetry" on your usage data.”
“Whatever you do, don't click this link”
“Pretty funny boasting about accelerated results, when his public contributions are only in two repositories”
“if it doesn't sober them up with its absurdity”
“I'm less interested in "AI org chart" setups like gstack”
“gstack's git-clone-and-copy install model works great solo”
“I found the Garry Tan's gstack README to be too linkedin-ey”
“The original is brilliant for web dev (Playwright, npm, React).”
“It just unnecessarily clutters the context, in EVERY single skill.”
“The approach to using the browser is superior to Claude's built-in extension in pretty much every way”
“the CEO plan mode in the repo is interesting (although very token heavy)”
“I tried to design it to ship good software.”
“GStack is a brilliant setup for maximizing Claude Code's velocity.”
“this fucking weasel needs all of this to drop a slop based site like Garry's list”
“Dramatically improved code quality and speed of development for me.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.