gstack-workflow

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 (MIT License).

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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.

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Sprint Workflow

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

Safety Tools

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

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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.

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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.