{"id":229087,"date":"2026-03-17T20:50:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T20:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/why-garry-tans-claude-code-setup-has-gotten-so-much-love-and-hate-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T20:50:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T20:50:04","slug":"why-garry-tans-claude-code-setup-has-gotten-so-much-love-and-hate-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/why-garry-tans-claude-code-setup-has-gotten-so-much-love-and-hate-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Garry Tan’s Claude Code setup has gotten so much love, and hate | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Y Combinator\u2019s famed CEO Garry Tan told a SXSW audience<\/a> that he\u2019s got \u201ccyber psychosis\u201d and is barely sleeping because he\u2019s so excited to be working with AI agents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sleep, like, four hours a night right now,\u201d he told his interviewer, fellow VC Bill Gurley, during an onstage interview Saturday. \u201cI have cyber psychosis, but I think a third of the CEOs that I know have it as well,\u201d he joked about his current AI obsession. (At least, we hope he was joking. AI-induced psychosis can actually be a dangerous condition<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you try it, you\u2019ll realize: It\u2019s like I was able to re-create my startup that took $10 million in VC capital and 10 people, and I worked on that for two years, and I took anti-narcoleptics \u2014 I remember, you know, sort of being on modafinil,\u201d he described, referencing the sleep-preventing drug that\u2019s popular with the startup hustle-culture crowd<\/a>. (Tan sold his Y Combinator-backed blogging startup Posterous to Twitter back in 2012<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But now, his psyche is so amped working with AI agents, it\u2019s a natural insomnia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t need modafinil with this revolution. Like, I\u2019m up. I slept at 4 a.m. I woke up at 8 a.m.,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to sleep more, but I couldn\u2019t because: Let\u2019s see what\u2019s going on with the 10 workers. I\u2019ve got like three different projects going right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s so excited about his agents that on March 12, just two days before the interview, he proudly, freely shared his Claude Code (CC) setup on GitHub under an open source license. The setup included six \u201copinionated\u201d Claude Code skills he developed. Skills are reusable prompts stored in special \u201cskill.md\u201d\u00a0files that instruct the AI how to behave in specific roles or tasks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been having such an amazing time with Claude Code, I wanted you to be able to have my *exact* skill setup,\u201d he posted on X<\/a>. He called his Claude Code setup \u201cgstack.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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gstack is available now at https:\/\/t.co\/VPvWDzV5c0<\/a> <\/p>\n

Open source, MIT license, let me know if it works for you. It’s just one paste to install it on your local Claude Code, and it’s a 2nd one to install it in your repo for your teammates.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Garry Tan (@garrytan) March 12, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Since then he\u2019s added several more skills. The gstack GitHub repository currently lists 13, but it seems like every hour Tan tweets<\/a> about something new.<\/p>\n

In one post, he gave an example of how his setup works. First, he gets Claude\u2019s opinion on whether a startup idea or feature is a good idea using a skill where Claude acts like CEO. He uses another skill to have Claude write the feature as an engineer, and another to review its own work for bugs and security issues as a code reviewer. Other skills cover design, documentation, and so on.<\/p>\n

The love for gstack began immediately: His tweet went viral on X and trended on Product Hunt<\/a>. It\u2019s accumulated nearly 20,000 stars on GitHub with 2,200 \u201cforks,\u201d meaning people who have taken the files to modify for themselves.<\/p>\n

But shortly after releasing gstack, Tan posted a tweet that caused a heap of hate, too.<\/p>\n

He wrote that a CTO friend told him gstack was \u201cgod mode\u201d that instantly found a security flaw in his company\u2019s code and predicted it will be widely used.<\/p>\n

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My CTO friend texted me: “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. I will make a bet that over 90% of new repos from today forward will use gstack.” https:\/\/t.co\/P7aOFu5wFM<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Garry Tan (@garrytan) March 12, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

To quote just a few of the many hater comments that followed: One founder posted to X<\/a>: \u201c(1) Garry should be embarrassed for tweeting this. (2) If it\u2019s true, that CTO should be fired immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vlogger Mo Bitar did a take on gstack called<\/a> \u201cAI is making CEOs delusional\u201d in which he pointed out that the project was essentially \u201ca bunch of prompts\u201d in a text file. The vlogger summarized the common complaint: Developers who use Claude Code already have their own versions of this.<\/p>\n

Added one person on Product Hunt<\/a>, \u201cGarry, let\u2019s be clear and honest: if you weren\u2019t the CEO of YC, this wouldn\u2019t be on PH.\u201d<\/p>\n

So who\u2019s right? Is gstack a uniquely useful way to work with Claude Code? Or unremarkable? To find out, I asked the experts, including Claude (which, not surprisingly, absolutely loved it). I also queried ChatGPT and Gemini, both of which were surprisingly positive.<\/p>\n

Gstack is a group of \u201creasonably sophisticated prompt workflows, but they\u2019re not \u2018magical,\u2019\u201d ChatGPT opined. \u201cThe real insight here is that AI coding works best when you simulate an engineering org structure. Not when you just ask: \u2018build this feature.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Gemini called the setup \u201csophisticated,\u201d adding that \u201cgstack is essentially a \u2018Pro\u2019 configuration. It is less about making coding easier and more about making it correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claude called gstack \u201ca mature, opinionated system built by someone who actually uses it heavily,\u201d adding, \u201cIt\u2019s one of the better examples of Claude Code skill design out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll take that as a thumbs-up from an expert on the topic.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Tan explained in another X post<\/a>, \u201cI 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. I love coding but I love coding with AI even more. I speak it listens and we create. I see the structure and it is built. There is no more powerful an experience to me than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tan did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n