Garry Tan Releases gstack: An Open-Source Claude Code System for Planning, Code Review, QA, and Shipping

Garry Tan Releases gstack: An Open-Source Claude Code System for Planning, Code Review, QA, and Shipping

What if AI-assisted coding became more reliable by separating product planning, engineering review, release, and QA into distinct operating modes? That is the idea behind Garry Tan’s gstack, an open-source toolkit that packages Claude Code into 8 opinionated workflow skills backed by a persistent browser runtime.

The tookit describes itself as ‘Eight opinionated workflow skills for Claude Code‘ and groups common software delivery tasks into distinct modes such as planning, review, shipping, browser automation, QA testing, and retrospectives. The goal is not to replace Claude Code with a new model layer. It is to make Claude Code operate with more explicit role boundaries during product planning, engineering review, release, and testing.

The 8 Core Commands

The gstack repository currently exposes 8 main commands:

• /plan-ceo-review: positioned as a product-level planning pass
• /plan-eng-review: used for architecture, data flow, failure modes, and tests
• /review: focused on production risk and code review
• /ship: used for preparing a ready branch, syncing with main, running tests, and opening a PR
• /browse: gives the agent browser access
• /qa: designed for systematic testing of affected routes and flows
• /setup-browser-cookies: imports cookies from a local browser into the headless session
• /retro: used for engineering retrospectives

The Persistent Browser Is the Core System

The most important technical part of gstack is not the Markdown skills. It is the browser subsystem. gstack gives Claude Code a persistent browser and that the browser is the hard part, while the rest is mainly Markdown. Instead of launching a fresh browser for every action, gstack runs a long-lived headless Chromium daemon and communicates with it over localhost HTTP.

How gstack Connects Browser Automation to QA

That daemon architecture matters for QA and browser-driven development. In many agent workflows, browser automation is a separate debugging step or a screenshot utility. In gstack, browser access is part of the core workflow. The repo describes /browse as the mode that lets the agent log in, click through the app, take screenshots, and inspect breakage. /qa builds on top of that by analyzing the branch diff, identifying affected routes, and testing the relevant pages or flows.

Installation Requirements and Project Layout

The repository’s implementation choices are also fairly specific. gstack requires Claude Code, Git, and Bun v1.0+. The package.json shows the current version as 0.3.3, lists Playwright and diff as runtime dependencies, and compiles a browse executable from the browse source tree.