---
name: gstack-workflow
description: Structured AI-assisted development workflow with specialist roles — Think, Plan, Build, Review, Test, Ship, Reflect. Adapted from garrytan/gstack (MIT).
metadata: { "openclaw": { "inject": true, "always": true, "emoji": "⚡" } }
---

# gstack — Structured Development Workflow

A process that turns AI into a virtual engineering team. Eighteen specialist roles, structured as a sprint: **Think → Plan → Build → Review → Test → Ship → Reflect**. Each skill feeds into the next.

Adapted from [garrytan/gstack](https://github.com/garrytan/gstack) (MIT License).

---

## Completeness Principle — Boil the Lake

AI-assisted coding makes the marginal cost of completeness near-zero. When presenting options:

- If Option A is complete (all edge cases, full coverage) and Option B is a shortcut — **always recommend A**.
- **Lake vs. ocean:** A "lake" is boilable — 100% test coverage for a module, full feature implementation, all edge cases. An "ocean" is not — multi-quarter migrations, rewriting dependencies. Recommend boiling lakes. Flag oceans as out of scope.
- Don't skip the last 10% to "save time" — with AI, that 10% costs seconds.

## Search Before Building

Before building infrastructure or unfamiliar patterns — **search first**.

**Three layers of knowledge:**

- **Layer 1** (tried and true): Don't reinvent the wheel.
- **Layer 2** (new and popular): Search for these, but scrutinize.
- **Layer 3** (first principles): Original observations from reasoning about the specific problem. The most valuable.

---

## Sprint Workflow

| Phase       | Skill                                               | Role                 | What it does                                                                             |
| ----------- | --------------------------------------------------- | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Think**   | [office-hours](office-hours/SKILL.md)               | YC Office Hours      | Forcing questions that reframe the product before code. Design doc feeds downstream.     |
| **Plan**    | [plan-ceo-review](plan-ceo-review/SKILL.md)         | CEO / Founder        | Rethink the problem. 10-star product. Four modes: Expansion, Selective, Hold, Reduction. |
| **Plan**    | [plan-eng-review](plan-eng-review/SKILL.md)         | Eng Manager          | Lock architecture, data flow, diagrams, edge cases, tests.                               |
| **Plan**    | [plan-design-review](plan-design-review/SKILL.md)   | Senior Designer      | Rate design dimensions 0-10, explain what a 10 looks like, edit the plan.                |
| **Plan**    | [design-consultation](design-consultation/SKILL.md) | Design Partner       | Build a complete design system from scratch.                                             |
| **Review**  | [review](review/SKILL.md)                           | Staff Engineer       | Find bugs that pass CI but blow up in production. Auto-fix obvious ones.                 |
| **Review**  | [design-review](design-review/SKILL.md)             | Designer Who Codes   | Same audit as plan-design-review, then fixes what it finds.                              |
| **Debug**   | [investigate](investigate/SKILL.md)                 | Debugger             | Systematic root-cause debugging. No fixes without investigation.                         |
| **Test**    | [qa](qa/SKILL.md)                                   | QA Lead              | Test the app, find bugs, fix with atomic commits, re-verify.                             |
| **Test**    | [qa-only](qa-only/SKILL.md)                         | QA Reporter          | Same methodology as qa, but report only — no code changes.                               |
| **Test**    | [benchmark](benchmark/SKILL.md)                     | Performance Engineer | Page load times, Core Web Vitals, bundle sizes. Before/after on every PR.                |
| **Ship**    | [ship](ship/SKILL.md)                               | Release Engineer     | Sync main, run tests, audit coverage, push, open PR.                                     |
| **Ship**    | [land-and-deploy](land-and-deploy/SKILL.md)         | Release Engineer     | Merge PR, wait for CI, deploy, verify production health.                                 |
| **Ship**    | [canary](canary/SKILL.md)                           | SRE                  | Post-deploy monitoring loop. Console errors, perf regressions, page failures.            |
| **Reflect** | [retro](retro/SKILL.md)                             | Eng Manager          | Weekly retro with per-person breakdowns, shipping streaks, test health.                  |
| **Reflect** | [document-release](document-release/SKILL.md)       | Technical Writer     | Update all docs to match what shipped. Catches stale READMEs.                            |

### Safety Tools

| Skill                         | What it does                                                       |
| ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| [careful](careful/SKILL.md)   | Warn before destructive commands (rm -rf, DROP TABLE, force-push). |
| [freeze](freeze/SKILL.md)     | Restrict edits to one directory to prevent accidental changes.     |
| [guard](guard/SKILL.md)       | Maximum safety: careful + freeze combined.                         |
| [unfreeze](unfreeze/SKILL.md) | Remove the freeze boundary.                                        |

---

## Completion Status Protocol

When completing any skill workflow, report status using one of:

- **DONE** — All steps completed successfully. Evidence provided.
- **DONE_WITH_CONCERNS** — Completed, but with issues to flag.
- **BLOCKED** — Cannot proceed. State what's blocking and what was tried.
- **NEEDS_CONTEXT** — Missing information required to continue.

### Escalation

It is always OK to stop and say "this is too hard" or "I'm not confident in this result."

- If you have attempted a task 3 times without success, STOP and escalate.
- If you are uncertain about a security-sensitive change, STOP and escalate.

---

## Suggesting Skills

When you notice the user is at a particular stage, suggest the appropriate skill:

- Brainstorming a new idea → suggest office-hours
- Reviewing a plan (strategy) → suggest plan-ceo-review
- Reviewing a plan (architecture) → suggest plan-eng-review
- Reviewing a plan (design) → suggest plan-design-review
- Creating a design system → suggest design-consultation
- Debugging errors → suggest investigate
- Testing the app → suggest qa
- Code review before merge → suggest review
- Visual design audit → suggest design-review
- Ready to deploy / create PR → suggest ship
- Post-ship doc updates → suggest document-release
- Weekly retrospective → suggest retro
- Working with production or live systems → suggest careful

All child skills are seeded into the workspace alongside this parent skill and can be read at `{{WORKSPACE_PATH}}/skills/gstack/<child>/SKILL.md`.
