Y Combinator CEO releases 'gstack' AI coding workflow

Garry Tan, the CEO of startup accelerator Y Combinator, has sparked a viral trend with the release of gstack, a configuration for Claude Code, which is an AI coding tool. Tan shared his setup on GitHub on March 12, after working with an intensity he jokingly described as cyber psychosis. In an interview, Tan joked about his current AI obsession, stating that he sleeps about four hours a night and claiming that a third of the CEOs he knows also have cyber psychosis. While Tan’s representative confirmed he was joking, AI-induced psychosis can actually be a dangerous health condition. Tan explained that working with AI agents has replaced his past use of modafinil, a sleep-preventing drug he used while working on a previous startup that raised $10 million in venture capital, employed 10 people, and took two years of work before being sold in 2012. His current setup has quickly gained traction, accumulating nearly 20,000 stars and 2,200 forks on GitHub.

The gstack project consists of 13 opinionated skills—reusable prompts stored in skill.md files—designed to instruct AI agents to act as engineers, reviewers, and designers across different projects. Tan noted he has about 10 workers or agents running across three different projects. While some users and a CTO friend have hailed the setup as god mode for its reported ability to instantly find a security flaw, critics have pushed back. Vlogger Mo Bitar, who characterized the situation as AI making CEOs delusional, argued that gstack is essentially a bunch of prompts in a text file, noting that experienced developers using Claude Code already have their own versions of these workflows.

The release has triggered a broader debate about the influence of Y Combinator’s leadership on developer trends. Sherveen Mashayekhi, the founder of startup talent agency Free Agency, suggested the project’s popularity is tied to Tan’s status rather than its technical novelty, posting on Product Hunt—a platform for launching new tech products: “Garry, let’s be clear and honest: if you weren’t the CEO of YC, this wouldn’t be on PH.” Meanwhile, AI models including Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini have offered positive assessments of the setup. ChatGPT described gstack as a group of reasonably sophisticated prompt workflows that are not magical, while Gemini called it a sophisticated configuration. Claude itself praised the repository, calling it a mature, opinionated system built by someone who actually uses it heavily. On Monday, Tan defended his workflow in an X post, explaining his use of modafinil to write code before sleep or distraction intervened, adding that he loves coding with AI even more.

Why it matters

Garry Tan’s release of his “gstack” Claude Code setup went viral, sparking a debate about the utility of AI coding workflows and the influence of Y Combinator’s leadership on developer trends.