skills vs gstack
Two of the top projects in Skills, plugins and prompts, side by side: who leads on each score part and who each one suits, then setup, license, activity and what each review found.
skills
Agent skills for planning, TDD, debugging and code review
gstack
Markdown slash-command skills that give Claude Code planning, review, QA and ship roles
Verdict
Both score 95; skills ranks higher on stars, 308,940 to 138,536. Of the 4 score parts we measure for both, skills leads on 1, gstack on 1 and 2 are even.
- Adoptionskills leads by 2 points, 100 to 98: close to even.
- FreshnessEven at 100.
- Maintenancegstack leads by 4 points, 96 to 92: close to even.
- Agent-readyEven at 70.
Pick skills if you are
Engineers using Claude Code, Codex, Copilot or Gemini CLI on real codebases
- Small, composable skills that can be edited; README says they work with any model
- Plugin install for Claude Code, Codex and Copilot, with automatic updates
Pick gstack if you are
Claude Code users wanting structured planning, review, QA and release workflows
- Claude Code is the only full-tier host; safety hooks like /careful and /freeze are enforced there
- Skills are plain Markdown, so they can be forked and edited
| What we compare | skills | gstack |
|---|---|---|
| Score parts, out of 100 | ||
| Adoption | 100, widely used | 98, widely used |
| Freshness | 100, active | 100, active |
| Maintenance | 92, healthy | 96, healthy |
| Agent-ready | 70, partly | 70, partly |
| Facts from GitHub and the README | ||
| Stars | 308.9k | 138.5k |
| License | MIT (permissive) | MIT (permissive) |
| Last commit | Oct 2026 | Nov 2026 |
| Last release | Oct 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| Language | Shell | TypeScript |
| Docker | No | No |
| GPU | Not needed | Not needed |
| arm64 or Apple Silicon | Not stated | Mentioned |
skills
A collection of Markdown skill files for coding agents, split into engineering and productivity groups. It covers grilling sessions that build a project glossary and ADRs, spec and ticket generation, red-green-refactor TDD, a bug diagnosis loop, and diff review. Installs as a plugin for Claude Code, Codex and GitHub Copilot, via gemini skills install for Gemini CLI, or as editable files through npx skills.
Who it is for: Engineers using Claude Code, Codex, Copilot or Gemini CLI on real codebases
Strengths
- Small, composable skills that can be edited; README says they work with any model
- Plugin install for Claude Code, Codex and Copilot, with automatic updates
- Setup skill configures issue tracker (GitHub, GitLab, local files), triage labels and doc locations
- Separates user-invoked orchestration skills from model-invoked discipline skills
Weaknesses
- Manual updates for Gemini CLI and npx installs
- Installing both plugin and npx copies gives every skill twice
- Must run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once per repo before the engineering skills
- Architecture skill is a survey only and will not untangle an old codebase
- no GPU
- Needs Issue tracker (GitHub, GitLab or local files)
- Models: Any model (per README)
gstack
gstack is a set of Markdown skills, exposed as slash commands such as /office-hours, /plan-ceo-review, /review, /qa, /cso and /ship, that split a coding session into roles: product, architecture, design, review, QA, security and release. Setup is a git clone into ~/.claude/skills plus a Bun-based ./setup script that also builds a bundled browser for QA. Claude Code is the full-tier host; Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, Kiro and others are experimental.
Who it is for: Claude Code users wanting structured planning, review, QA and release workflows
Strengths
- Claude Code is the only full-tier host; safety hooks like /careful and /freeze are enforced there
- Skills are plain Markdown, so they can be forked and edited
- Team mode auto-updates for shared repos with no vendored files
- Installs for multiple agents (Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Kiro, Copilot CLI) via --host flags
Weaknesses
- Non-Claude hosts are experimental or instruction-only, and safety skills only advise there
- Outside reviews need a second CLI (Codex or Claude Code) installed and signed in
- /cso needs a recent Bun with specific build flags plus a native C toolchain
- README leads with the author's productivity claims, not behavior of the skills
- no GPU
- Needs Claude Code, Git, Bun 1.3.3+ (1.4.2 tested), Node.js (Windows only), Codex CLI (optional, outside reviews), OpenAI API key (optional, design binary)
- Models: Claude (Opus 5.5), OpenAI GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI GPT-6.1 Sol, OpenAI gpt-5.5 and gpt-image-2 (design binary)
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