Nanostack

Turns your AI agent into an engineering team that challenges scope, plans, reviews, tests, audits and ships.
One sprint. Minutes, not weeks.

Install · The Sprint · Autopilot · Guard · Know-how · Extend · Contributing

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Inspired by gstack from Garry Tan. 8 skills. Zero dependencies. Zero build step.

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, Amp and Cline.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/garagon/nanostack.git ~/.claude/skills/nanostack
cd ~/.claude/skills/nanostack && ./setup

That's it. Now try this:

You:    I need to add notifications to my app. Users keep missing
        replies on their posts.
You:    /think

Agent:  Before we build anything, how are users coping today?

You:    They open the app 3-4 times a day just to check. Sometimes
        they miss replies for hours. People are frustrated.

Agent:  I'm going to push back on "notifications." You said users open
        the app 3-4 times a day. That's high engagement. They already
        come back. The problem isn't that they can't be reached. The
        problem is that when they arrive, they can't tell what changed.

        That's a freshness problem, not a messaging problem.

        A notification system (email, push, in-app, preferences,
        digest, unsubscribe) is a 3-week project. A red dot on the
        nav icon that says "something new" ships this afternoon.

        One solves the symptom (they're not being told). The other
        solves the cause (they can't see what's new when they look).

        RECOMMENDATION: Reduce. Ship the dot. See if complaints drop.
        If they do, you just saved 3 weeks. If they don't, then build
        push notifications, but now you have data, not a guess.

You:    Makes sense. Let's do the dot.
You:    /nano
        [3 steps, 2 files, product standards: shadcn/ui + Tailwind]

You:    [builds it]

You:    /review
        Review: 2 findings (1 auto-fixed, 1 nit). 2 things done well.

You:    /ship
        Ship: PR created. Tests pass. Done.

You said "notifications." The agent said "your users have a freshness problem" and found a solution that ships in an afternoon instead of three weeks. Four commands. That is not a copilot. That is a thinking partner.

The sprint

Nanostack is a process, not a collection of tools. The skills run in the order a sprint runs:

/think → /nano → build → /review → /qa → /security → /ship

Each skill feeds into the next. /nano writes an artifact that /review reads for scope drift detection. /review catches conflicts with /security findings. /ship verifies everything is clean before creating the PR. Nothing falls through the cracks because every step knows what came before it.

Skill	Your specialist	What they do
/think	CEO / Founder	Three intensity modes: Founder (full pushback), Startup (challenges scope, respects pain) and Builder (minimal pushback). Six forcing questions including manual delivery test and community validation. --autopilot runs the full sprint after approval.
/nano	Eng Manager	Auto-generates product specs (Medium scope) or product + technical specs (Large scope) before implementation steps. Product standards for web (shadcn/ui), CLI/TUI (Bubble Tea, Rich, Ink, Ratatui). Stack defaults with CLI preference for beginners.
/review	Staff Engineer	Two-pass code review: structural then adversarial. Auto-fixes mechanical issues, asks about judgment calls. Detects scope drift against the plan. Cross-references /security with 10 conflict precedents.
/qa	QA Lead	Functional testing + Visual QA. Takes screenshots and analyzes UI against product standards. Browser, API, CLI and debug modes. WTF heuristic stops before fixes cause regressions.
/security	Security Engineer	Auto-detects your stack, scans secrets, injection, auth, CI/CD, AI/LLM vulnerabilities. Graded report (A-F). Cross-references /review for conflict detection. Every finding includes the fix.
/ship	Release Engineer	Pre-flight + repo quality checks (broken links, stale refs, writing quality). PR creation, CI monitoring, post-deploy verification. Auto-generates sprint journal. Rollback plan included.

Power tools

Skill	What it does
/guard	Three-tier safety: allowlist, in-project bypass, pattern matching with 28 block rules. Blocked commands get a safer alternative. /freeze locks edits to one directory. Rules in guard/rules.json.
/conductor	Orchestrate parallel agent sessions through a sprint. Agents claim phases, resolve dependencies, hand off artifacts. No daemon, just atomic file ops.

Intensity modes

Not every change needs a full audit. /review, /qa and /security support three modes:

Mode	Flag	When to use
Quick	--quick	Typos, config, docs. Only report the obvious.
Standard	(default)	Normal features and bug fixes.
Thorough	--thorough	Auth, payments, infra. Flag everything suspicious.

Specs by scope

/nano generates specs automatically based on project complexity:

Scope	What you get
Small (1-3 files)	Implementation steps only
Medium (4-10 files)	Product spec + implementation steps
Large (10+ files)	Product spec + technical spec + implementation steps

The product spec covers: problem, solution, user stories, acceptance criteria, user flow, edge cases, out of scope. The technical spec adds: architecture, data model, API contracts, integrations, technical decisions, security considerations, migration/rollback.

Specs are presented for approval before implementation. If the spec is wrong, everything downstream is wrong.

See it work: full sprint

You:    I want to build a security scanner for cloud misconfigurations.
        We keep finding S3 buckets left public and IAM roles that are
        way too broad. Last month a public bucket caused an incident.
You:    /think

Agent:  I'm going to push back on "security scanner." A scanner finds
        problems after they exist. But you said last month a public
        bucket caused an incident. You don't want to find misconfigs,
        you want to stop them from reaching production.

        That's a prevention gate, not a scanner. Different product.

        The scanner is 10% better than what you have (manual audits).
        A pre-deploy gate is 10x. The misconfiguration never ships.

        Who would use a broken v1 tomorrow? Your platform team. They
        got paged for that incident. They'd use anything that blocks
        public S3 buckets before deploy, even if it only checks one rule.

        RECOMMENDATION: Reduce scope. One rule. S3 public access check,
        pre-deploy. Ship tomorrow. The full scanner is a 3-month project.

You:    That makes sense. Let's start with S3.
You:    /nano
        [5 steps, 4 files, risks listed, out-of-scope explicit]

You:    [builds the feature]

You:    /review
        Review: 3 findings (2 auto-fixed, 1 ask). Scope drift: CLEAN.

You:    /security
        Security: CRITICAL (0) HIGH (0) MEDIUM (1) LOW (1). Score: A.

You:    /ship
        Ship: PR created. CI passed. Post-deploy: smoke test clean.

You said "security scanner." The agent said "you're building a prevention gate" because it listened to your pain, not your feature request. Six commands, start to shipped.

Autopilot

Discuss the idea, approve the brief, walk away. The agent runs the full sprint:

/think --autopilot

/think is interactive: the agent asks questions, you answer, you align on the brief. After you approve, everything else runs automatically:

/nano → build → /review → /security → /qa → /ship

Autopilot only stops if:

• /review finds blocking issues that need your decision
• /security finds critical or high vulnerabilities
• /qa tests fail
• A product question comes up the agent can't answer from context

Between steps the agent shows status:

Autopilot: build complete. Running /review...
Autopilot: review clean (5 findings, 0 blocking). Running /security...
Autopilot: security grade A. Running /qa...
Autopilot: qa passed (12 tests, 0 failed). Running /ship...

Parallel sprints

Nanostack works well with one agent. It gets interesting with three running at once.

/conductor coordinates multiple sessions. Each agent claims a phase, executes it and the next agent picks up the artifact. Review, QA and security run in parallel because they all depend on build, not on each other.

/think → /nano → build ─┬─ /review   (Agent A) ─┐
                              ├─ /qa       (Agent B)  ├─ /ship
                              └─ /security (Agent C) ─┘

No daemon. No message queue. Just mkdir for atomic locking, JSON for state, symlinks for artifact handoff.

Guard

AI agents make mistakes. They run rm -rf when they mean rm -r, force push to main when they mean to push to a branch, pipe untrusted URLs to shell. /guard catches these before they execute.

Three tiers

Inspired by Claude Code auto mode, guard evaluates every command through three tiers:

Tier 1: Allowlist. Commands like git status, ls, cat, jq skip all checks. They can't cause damage.

Tier 2: In-project. Operations that only touch files inside the current git repo pass through. If the agent writes a bad file, you revert it. Version control is the safety net.

Tier 3: Pattern matching. Everything else is checked against block and warn rules. 28 block rules cover mass deletion, history destruction, database drops, production deploys, remote code execution, security degradation and safety bypasses. 9 warn rules cover operations that need attention but not blocking.

Deny-and-continue

When guard blocks a command, it doesn't just say "no." It suggests a safer alternative:

BLOCKED [G-007] Force push overwrites remote history
Category: history-destruction
Command: git push --force origin main

Safer alternative: git push --force-with-lease (safer, fails if remote changed)

The agent reads this and retries with the safer command. No manual intervention needed.

Configurable rules

All rules live in guard/rules.json. Each rule has an ID, regex pattern, category, description and (for block rules) a safer alternative. Add your own:

{
  "id": "G-100",
  "pattern": "terraform destroy",
  "category": "infra-destruction",
  "description": "Destroy all Terraform-managed infrastructure",
  "alternative": "terraform plan -destroy first to review what would be removed"
}

Install

Recommended: git clone

Full features including skill rename, analytics, sprint journal and project setup.

git clone https://github.com/garagon/nanostack.git ~/.claude/skills/nanostack
cd ~/.claude/skills/nanostack && ./setup

Supports Claude Code (default), Codex (--host codex), Cursor (--host cursor), OpenCode (--host opencode), Gemini CLI (--host gemini), or all at once (--host auto).

Update:

~/.claude/skills/nanostack/bin/upgrade.sh

Run from anywhere. Pulls latest, shows what changed, re-runs setup if needed. No build step. Skills use symlinks. Changes take effect immediately.

Alternative: npx skills

One command, auto-detects installed agents.

npx skills add garagon/nanostack -g --full-depth

-g installs globally (available in every project, not just the current directory). --full-depth installs all 8 skills. Without it, only the root overview skill gets installed.

Natively supports Claude Code, OpenClaw, Antigravity, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Amp, Cline and others.

Update:

npx skills update

Note: this method copies skill files instead of linking to the git repo. Advanced features like --rename, bin/analytics.sh, sprint journal and bin/init-project.sh are not available through this method. For the full workflow use git clone.

Alternative: Gemini CLI extension

gemini extensions install https://github.com/garagon/nanostack --consent

Rename skills

If you have other skill sets installed (gstack, superpowers, etc.) and names collide, rename the ones that conflict. Requires git clone install.

cd ~/.claude/skills/nanostack
./setup --rename "review=my-review,security=my-security"

Renames persist between updates. Other useful commands:

./setup --list           # show current skill names
./setup --rename reset   # restore original names

Project setup

Run once in each project to configure permissions and .gitignore. Requires git clone install.

~/.claude/skills/nanostack/bin/init-project.sh

This creates .claude/settings.json with permissions so Claude Code doesn't interrupt the workflow asking for approval on every file create or bash command. Also adds .nanostack/ to .gitignore.

Windows

Requires Git for Windows which includes Git Bash. Claude Code uses Git Bash internally, so the setup script and all bin/ scripts work without changes. Alternatively use WSL or npx skills add.

Requirements

• macOS, Linux or Windows (Git Bash or WSL)
• jq for artifact processing (brew install jq, apt install jq, or choco install jq)
• Git
• One of: Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, Amp, Cline

The Zen of Nanostack

Question the requirement before writing the code.
Delete what shouldn't exist.
If nobody would use a broken v1, the scope is wrong.
Narrow the scope, not the ambition.
Ship the version that ships today.
Fix it or ask. Never ignore it.
Security is not a tradeoff. It is a constraint.
The output should look better than what was asked for.
If the plan is hard to explain, the plan is wrong.

Full version in ZEN.md.

Know-how

Most AI coding tools are stateless. Every session starts from zero. Nanostack builds knowledge as you work without extra commands.

Every skill saves automatically

Every skill persists its output to .nanostack/ after every run. You don't add flags. It just happens.

/think     →  .nanostack/think/20260325-140000.json
/nano →  .nanostack/plan/20260325-143000.json
/review    →  .nanostack/review/20260325-150000.json
/qa        →  .nanostack/qa/20260325-151500.json
/security  →  .nanostack/security/20260325-152000.json
/ship      →  .nanostack/ship/20260325-160000.json

A review artifact captures everything: findings, scope drift, conflicts resolved.

{
  "phase": "review",
  "mode": "standard",
  "summary": { "blocking": 0, "should_fix": 2, "nitpicks": 1, "positive": 3 },
  "scope_drift": { "status": "drift_detected", "out_of_scope_files": ["src/unplanned.ts"] },
  "conflicts": [
    { "finding_id": "REV-005", "conflicts_with": "SEC-003",
      "tension": "complementary", "resolution": "structured error codes" }
  ]
}

Full schema in reference/artifact-schema.md. To disable, set auto_save: false in .nanostack/config.json.

Skills read each other

/review automatically finds the most recent /nano artifact and checks scope drift: did you touch files outside the plan? Did you skip files that were in it?

/nano     →  saves planned_files list
/review   →  finds plan, compares against git diff, reports:
              "drift_detected: src/unplanned.ts out of scope, tests/auth.test.ts missing"

/security automatically finds the most recent /review artifact and detects conflicts. /review says "add detail to error messages." /security says "don't expose internals." The resolution gets matched against 10 built-in precedents and recorded.

/review   →  saves "REV-003: error messages too vague"
/security →  finds review, detects conflict, resolves:
              "structured errors: code + generic msg to user, details to logs"

This happens in all modes. No flags needed. If an artifact exists, the next skill reads it.

Sprint journal on /ship

When you run /ship and the PR lands, it automatically generates a sprint journal:

/ship  →  saves PR data
       →  runs bin/sprint-journal.sh
       →  writes .nanostack/know-how/journal/2026-03-25-myproject.md

The journal reads every phase artifact from the sprint and writes one file with the full decision trail: what /think reframed, what /nano scoped, what /review found, how conflicts were resolved, what /security graded.

Analytics and learnings

Two optional scripts for when you want to see patterns across sprints:

bin/analytics.sh --obsidian    # dashboard with phase counts and security trends
bin/capture-learning.sh "..."  # append a learning to the knowledge base

Discard a bad session

If a sprint went wrong (agent hallucinated findings, aborted halfway, bad data), discard it:

bin/discard-sprint.sh                     # discard all artifacts from today for this project
bin/discard-sprint.sh --phase review      # discard only review artifacts
bin/discard-sprint.sh --date 2026-03-24   # discard artifacts from a specific date
bin/discard-sprint.sh --dry-run           # show what would be deleted without deleting

This removes artifacts and the journal entry. Analytics recalculate on next run.

The Obsidian vault

Open .nanostack/know-how/ in Obsidian. Sprint journals link to conflict precedents. The dashboard links to journals. Graph view shows how sprints, conflicts and learnings connect over time.

Build on nanostack

Nanostack is a platform. Build your own skill set on top of it for any domain.

Register custom phases in .nanostack/config.json:

{ "custom_phases": ["audience", "campaign", "measure"] }

Your skills use the same infrastructure: save-artifact.sh persists artifacts, find-artifact.sh reads them, skills cross-reference each other. The sprint journal, analytics and Obsidian vault work with custom phases.

A marketing team builds /audience and /campaign. A data team builds /explore and /model. A design team builds /wireframe and /usability. All compose with nanostack's /think for ideation, /review for quality and /ship for delivery.

Full guide: EXTENDING.md.

Privacy

All data stays on your machine in .nanostack/. No remote calls. No telemetry.

Run bin/analytics.sh to see your own usage: which skills you run, how often, in what mode. Reads local artifacts only.

Troubleshooting

Skills don't appear as slash commands. The setup script creates symlinks. If they broke, re-run ./setup.

jq: command not found when running scripts. Install jq: brew install jq (macOS) or apt install jq (Linux).

Port in use when running /qa browser tests. Find it: lsof -ti:3000. Kill it: kill $(lsof -ti:3000).

/conductor claim fails with BLOCKED. Dependencies not finished. Run conductor/bin/sprint.sh status to check.

Skills seem outdated. Run ~/.claude/skills/nanostack/bin/upgrade.sh to pull latest and re-run setup.

Uninstall

# Claude Code
cd ~/.claude/skills && rm -f think nano review qa security ship guard conductor && rm -rf nanostack

# Codex
rm -rf ~/.agents/skills/nanostack*

# Cursor
rm -f .cursor/rules/nanostack.md

# OpenCode
rm -rf ~/.agents/skills/nanostack

# Gemini CLI
gemini extensions remove nanostack

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, project structure and PR guidelines.

• Bug reports
• Feature requests
• Security vulnerabilities: SECURITY.md

License

Apache 2.0