Sparkplug creator and Y Combinator president Garry Tan recently shared his Claude Code setup, “gstack.” This announcement has led to the kind of enthusiasm and criticism that usually greet developers. On March 12, 2026, Tan tweeted about his exceptional qualifications for gstack. This seeming aside has triggered a tidal wave of response on Twitter, with people either loving her or hating her. Developers responded that gstack wasn’t needed, arguing that many developers already use their own tools that do similar things.
Gstack currently features 13 different skills on its GitHub repository. In just over a month, it has quickly gained a following of almost 20,000 stars and 2,200 forks. Tan regularly tweets news about new skills being added to gstack every hour. He’s created half a dozen of his own “opinionated” Claude Code skills to help with business, tech, and creative tasks, for example. Here’s how you can test the best startup ideas with these features. Or have the ability to code like an engineer and perform effective code reviews to identify bugs and security vulnerabilities.
These days, Tan’s approach to coding continues to turn heads—not just for the unusual way he works, but how he works. He has publicly admitted to using modafinil to extend his wakefulness for coding sessions, stating, “I took modafinil just to stay awake longer to be able to turn the momentary crystalline structures I had in my brain into lines of code before sleep or human distraction turned it to grains of sand.” He considered his sleep-deprived and haphazard routine. He admits to regularly getting by on four hours of sleep a night while multitasking on a dozen projects at once.
Gstack has been hugely successful on platforms like Product Hunt. Tan’s critics argue that its success is due to her position as the CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator (YC). One user commented, “Garry, let’s be clear and honest: if you weren’t the CEO of YC, this wouldn’t be on PH.” This sentiment is representative of a larger skepticism about whether or not Tan’s professional status will effectively shield gstack from backlash.
The launch of gstack fueled rich conversations about where artificial intelligence and transformative leadership meet. Collectively, these conversations are forcing the tech industry to reckon with its past and present. Mo Bitar said, “AI is causing CEOs to go crazy. In particular, he sounded the alarm on how depending on AI tools can distort the decision-making landscape for top execs.”
Claude, the AI system behind gstack, praised its construction, labeling it “a mature, opinionated system built by someone who actually uses it heavily.” This endorsement crystallizes gstack as something more than just an idea. That makes it an extremely valuable tool, focused on real-world usage.
Nevertheless, critiques persist. One founder expressed dismay over Tan’s tweet about gstack, stating, “Garry should be embarrassed for tweeting this. If it’s true, that CTO should be fired immediately.” Such reactions speak to the gap between public perception and need when it comes to gstack—especially as we try to keep up with a rapidly changing technological world.
Complementing the critiques, Tan’s anecdotal evidence from peers paints a powerful picture of gstack’s potential effect on industry. He shared a message from a CTO friend who remarked on the effectiveness of gstack in identifying security vulnerabilities: “Your gstack is crazy. This is like god mode. Your eng review discovered a subtle cross-site scripting attack that I don’t even think my team is aware of.”
The debate around gstack has opened up these deeper, philosophical divides between opposing approaches to our craft. One commentator noted that “gstack is essentially a ‘Pro’ configuration,” emphasizing its focus on producing correct code rather than merely simplifying the coding process. This nuance points to a larger trend in the development community of placing quality and security above convenience.