pstack for Claude Code and Codex

Claude Code port of poteto's pstack plugin (skill tree synced against upstream e46364b, pstack v0.9.2; upstream reviewed through 0452e08, v0.10.0 — see What's deliberately not ported). The same skills/ tree also ships as a Codex plugin; see Running on Codex. Original by Lauren Tan; ships MIT. Imports seven skills from cursor-team-kit (also MIT): deslop, thermo-nuclear-code-quality-review, make-pr-easy-to-review, fix-ci, fix-merge-conflicts, get-pr-comments, what-did-i-get-done.

if you want to go fast, go deep first. pstack helps you write less, but higher quality code. rigorous agent workflows you can parallelize with confidence.

This is not a verbatim copy. Skill bodies have been edited so every Cursor-specific primitive resolves to its Claude Code equivalent — see Differences from upstream for the full list. The exhaustive per-skill audit lives in CHANGES.md; license attribution lives in NOTICE.md; the upstream README is preserved verbatim at README-UPSTREAM.md.

Install

Claude Code

This repo ships as a Claude Code marketplace containing one plugin (pstack).

/plugin marketplace add michael-denyer/pstack-claude
/plugin install pstack@pstack-claude

From 0.9.5 the plugin auto-fires, the same way superpowers does: a SessionStart hook (on startup, /clear, and post-compact) injects a ~0.3k-token mandate that routes any non-trivial engineering task into poteto-mode before the first response. The full skill still loads only on invoke. Dispatched subagents are told to ignore the mandate, and explicit user instructions take precedence. To opt out, delete hooks/hooks.json from the installed copy (~/.claude/plugins/cache/pstack-claude/pstack/<version>/hooks/hooks.json); a plugin update restores it.

Codex

The same plugin carries a .codex-plugin/plugin.json manifest and a root .agents/plugins/marketplace.json. The verified install is to link the plugin's skills into your cross-runtime skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/michael-denyer/pstack-claude
cd pstack-claude
for s in plugins/pstack/skills/*/; do ln -s "$PWD/$s" ~/.agents/skills/"$(basename "$s")"; done

Codex discovers the linked skills and namespaces them under the plugin, so they list as pstack:poteto-mode, pstack:tdd, and so on. The namespace comes from plugins/pstack/.codex-plugin/plugin.json and resolves through the flat symlinks, even though each linked skill sits one directory below that manifest (verified on a live session via this symlink install). To enable the multi-model and parallel-subagent skills (interrogate, arena, how, why, reflect, architect), turn on subagents in ~/.codex/config.toml:

[features]
multi_agent = true

For slash-command shortcuts (/poteto-mode, /tdd, and the rest), link the command files into Codex's prompts directory:

mkdir -p ~/.codex/prompts
for c in plugins/pstack/commands/*.md; do ln -s "$PWD/$c" ~/.codex/prompts/"$(basename "$c")"; done

Each command invokes its skill, so /tdd runs the tdd skill. Installing the full plugin through the Codex marketplace (the root .agents/plugins/marketplace.json) carries skills and commands together; the two symlink steps above are the verified local path. Teardown is rm ~/.agents/skills/<name> and rm ~/.codex/prompts/<name>.md.

Layout

.
├── .claude-plugin/marketplace.json   # Claude Code marketplace manifest (repo root)
├── .agents/plugins/marketplace.json  # Codex marketplace manifest (repo root)
├── plugins/pstack/                   # the plugin itself
│   ├── .claude-plugin/plugin.json    # Claude Code manifest
│   ├── .codex-plugin/plugin.json     # Codex manifest (skills: ./skills/)
│   ├── skills/                       # 48 skills (shared by both runtimes)
│   │   └── poteto-mode/references/codex-tools.md  # Claude→Codex tool/model/skill map
│   ├── commands/                     # 27 slash command stubs (Codex-compatible; link into ~/.codex/prompts)
│   ├── hooks/                        # SessionStart auto-fire: injects the poteto-mode mandate (Claude Code only)
│   └── agents/poteto-agent.md        # Claude subagent (Codex routes via codex-tools.md)
├── tests/skill-collision-repro.sh    # manual repro for the 0.9.7/0.9.8 flag invariants (needs claude CLI)
├── LICENSE                           # pstack upstream MIT
├── LICENSE-cursor-team-kit           # cursor-team-kit upstream MIT
├── LICENSE-superpowers               # superpowers upstream MIT (hook runner)
├── NOTICE.md                         # attribution table
├── CHANGES.md                        # per-skill substitution audit
└── README.md                         # this file

Plugin-internal path references in the docs below (skills/<name>/, commands/<name>.md) are relative to plugins/pstack/.

Running on Codex

The Codex build shares one skills/ tree with the Claude Code build. Nothing is forked or generated. One mapping file does the translation. That single-mapping-file spine is the one superpowers ships for Codex. pstack diverges in one respect. superpowers writes its skills in tool-neutral language, so no skill names a runtime tool. pstack keeps the upstream Claude-native prose and adds a one-line Platform note to each skill that names a Claude primitive, so the port stays in lockstep with upstream sync.

• Skill invocation. Codex loads SKILL.md natively. There is no Skill tool. You invoke a skill by name (ask for it, or pick pstack:poteto-mode from the list).
• Commands. The 24 commands/*.md files are Codex-compatible as written. Codex reads their description frontmatter and the filename and ignores the keys it doesn't know (name, disable-model-invocation), and each body invokes its skill. They surface as slash commands when the full plugin is installed, or you can link them into ~/.codex/prompts/ for /name shortcuts (see Install on Codex). The disable-model-invocation: true flag exists for Claude Code, where a command and a skill sharing a name collide: the Skill tool resolved the name to the command trampoline, which told the model to invoke the skill, which resolved to the trampoline again — the skill never loaded (see CHANGES 0.9.7). With the flag, the model's Skill tool reaches only the skill; user-typed /pstack:<name> still runs the command. The mirror rule: a skill with a same-named command must not carry the flag — on a skill it makes the Skill tool refuse the invocation entirely, which broke the SessionStart mandate and every trampoline body until CHANGES 0.9.8 removed it from the 12 skills that had it. Only the command-less principle-* leaves keep the flag.
• Tool, model, and built-in mapping. When a skill names a Claude tool (the Agent tool, AskUserQuestion), a claude-* model slug, or a Claude built-in skill (run, verify, loop, plugin-dev:skill-development), it resolves through skills/poteto-mode/references/codex-tools.md. poteto-mode and every skill that names one of those carries a one-line Platform note pointing there.
• Subagents. The Agent tool maps to Codex spawn_agent / wait_agent / close_agent, enabled by multi_agent = true. Parallel fan-out is multiple spawn_agent calls in one turn. Without the flag, interrogate, arena, how, why, reflect, and architect degrade to a single sequential pass. There is no poteto-agent subagent type on Codex; route ad-hoc subagents by dispatching a spawn_agent told to read poteto-mode first.
• Auto-fire. The hooks/ SessionStart injection is Claude Code-only; Codex has no plugin hook runtime. Enter pstack:poteto-mode by name, or add a standing instruction to ~/.codex/AGENTS.md if you want the same always-on routing.
• Models. The claude-* slugs in skills are Claude defaults. On Codex substitute your configured Codex models, keeping multi-model panels genuinely diverse. /setup-pstack writes ~/.codex/pstack-models.md (referenced from ~/.codex/AGENTS.md) with Codex slugs instead of ~/.claude/pstack-models.md.

Verified on a live Codex session installed via the symlinks: the user-facing skills are discovered and namespaced under pstack (pstack:poteto-mode, pstack:interrogate, and so on). The principle-* leaf skills carry disable-model-invocation: true and no command, so Codex does not surface them in the picker, the same as Claude Code. They stay installed for poteto-mode to read by path. The deeper behaviors (mapping resolution mid-task, spawn_agent fan-out) follow the proven superpowers pattern and are worth confirming in your own session.

Dependencies

Nothing is declared in plugin.json. Install the one companion plugin yourself:

• plugin-dev (from the claude-plugins-official marketplace) — the rewiring routes skill-authoring tasks (in automate-me, reflect, poteto-mode) to the plugin-dev:skill-development skill:

  /plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official
  /plugin install plugin-dev@claude-plugins-official

  Until 0.9.2 this was a dependencies entry in plugin.json. The desktop app's --plugin-dir load mode can never resolve cross-marketplace dependencies and hard-disables the whole plugin, so 0.9.3 removed the declaration — full mechanism in the 0.9.3 entry of CHANGES.md. Without plugin-dev installed, only the skill-authoring routes degrade; everything else works.

Not declared as deps, but referenced in skill bodies:

• run, verify, loop — Claude Code CLI built-ins (ship with the binary, always available).
• gh CLI — system-level requirement of the babysit skill. Install via brew install gh and authenticate with gh auth login.

No third-party plugins. The harsher-critique escape hatch lives in the bundled thermo-nuclear-code-quality-review skill (imported from cursor-team-kit), not in an external plugin.

Slash commands

command	use it when
/poteto-mode	default entry point for any non-trivial task
/how	walk through how a subsystem works
/why	investigate why something was built this way (parallel multi-MCP evidence)
/architect	settle types and module shape before writing code that crosses a function boundary
/arena	run N parallel attempts at the same task and pick the best parts
/interrogate	have four different models try to break a diff
/automate-me	draft your own personal -mode skill from recent transcripts
/reflect	capture a long task's lessons as a skill edit
/tdd	fix a bug by writing the failing test first, then the fix
/typescript-best-practices	ground type-system discipline in TypeScript syntax
/figure-it-out	design a rigorous, auditable playbook for a task no bundled playbook fits
/show-me-your-work	log decisions to a reviewable tsv decision trail
/blast-radius	find what a change could break beyond the diff and prove safety by running code
/recall	catch up on recent working context from chat history, live state, and the shared record
/setup-pstack	configure pstack per-role model choices
/unslop	clean up writing by removing AI tells
/deslop	deslop a diff before commit
/babysit	monitor an open PR, fix CI/comments, keep it merge-ready
/thermo-nuclear-code-quality-review	extremely strict maintainability audit
/make-pr-easy-to-review	clean noisy history and improve PR description before review
/fix-ci	find failing PR checks, inspect logs, apply focused fixes
/fix-merge-conflicts	non-interactively resolve merge conflicts, validate, finalize
/get-pr-comments	fetch and summarize review comments from the active PR
/what-did-i-get-done	summarize authored commits over a user-chosen period

Subagent

poteto-agent ships unchanged. Spawn from a parent with subagent_type: "poteto-agent".

Differences from upstream

The port is editorial, not mechanical. Anywhere upstream pstack assumed Cursor-specific primitives, this port substitutes the Claude Code equivalent so refs actually resolve. Two prior ports (v1truv1us/ai-eng-system, Evan-Kim2028/agent-fleet) stop at namespacing — they vendor pstack under pstack/ and leave the Cursor refs intact. This port does the content surgery.

What's added

• skills/babysit/ — Claude Code analog of Cursor's closed-source /babysit built-in. Wraps gh pr view / gh pr checks / gh run view --log-failed plus the loop skill for pacing. Independently authored; workflow informed by Cursor's public /babysit behavior — not a copy of Cursor's implementation.
• skills/deslop/ — imported verbatim from cursor-team-kit. Cleans AI tells out of diffs before commit.
• skills/thermo-nuclear-code-quality-review/ — imported verbatim from cursor-team-kit. Used as the harsher-critique escape hatch in arena, interrogate, architect, and how (replaces the Cursor-original cross-vendor bridge).
• skills/make-pr-easy-to-review/ — imported verbatim from cursor-team-kit. Composes with opening-a-pr and babysit.
• skills/fix-ci/ — imported verbatim from cursor-team-kit. Narrower CI-fix primitive that babysit can route to.
• skills/fix-merge-conflicts/ — imported verbatim from cursor-team-kit. Pairs with babysit step 5.
• skills/get-pr-comments/ — imported verbatim from cursor-team-kit. Primitive for babysit step 4 and reflect.
• skills/what-did-i-get-done/ — imported verbatim from cursor-team-kit. Commit summary over a chosen period.

What's substituted in skill bodies

Upstream (Cursor)	This port (Claude Code)
Task tool, subagent_type: generalPurpose, readonly: false/true	Agent tool, subagent_type: "general-purpose", no readonly flag (subagent_type controls MCP access)
AskQuestion tool	AskUserQuestion tool
Cursor's built-in /loop	Claude Code's built-in loop skill
Cursor's built-in /babysit	babysit skill bundled in this plugin
Cursor's built-in /create-skill	plugin-dev:skill-development skill
cursor-team-kit control-cli (CLI/TUI driver)	Claude Code's run skill
cursor-team-kit control-ui (browser/Electron driver)	Claude Code's verify skill
Transcripts at ~/.cursor/projects/*/ or agent-transcripts/	~/.claude/projects/<encoded-cwd>/*.jsonl (where <encoded-cwd> is the workspace cwd with / → -)
Skill paths .cursor/skills/, ~/.cursor/plugins/	.claude/skills/, ~/.claude/plugins/
MCP discovery via Cursor's mcps/ directory	Tool list at top of system prompt (mcp__<server>__<name> entries), or .mcp.json, or claude mcp list
Model composer-2.5-fast (Cursor)	claude-sonnet-4-6
Model claude-opus-4-X-thinking-xhigh (Cursor UI variant)	claude-opus-4-8 (extended thinking configured separately)
Models gpt-5.3-codex-high-fast, gpt-5.5-high-fast (via Cursor)	claude-sonnet-4-6, claude-haiku-4-5 (Claude family)
Multi-model panels (arena, architect, interrogate, how-critics)	Default quad is claude-opus-4-8 + claude-sonnet-5 + claude-fable-5 + claude-sonnet-4-6 — four distinct models across three families (replaces the cross-vendor diversity lost in translation and restores upstream's four-way split).

What's lost in translation

Cross-vendor model diversity. arena, interrogate, architect, and how all rely on stress-testing a design against four different model families. Claude Code is single-vendor, so the four-way split collapses to four Claude variants by tier and thinking budget. Instead of bridging to an external CLI for that diversity, the rewiring routes the "harsher pass" to the bundled thermo-nuclear-code-quality-review skill — different style of pressure (strict maintainability rubric), not vendor diversity, but it lives in-plugin with no extra installs.

What's deliberately kept

• The poteto-agent subagent ID and all references to it.
• run_in_background: true on Agent calls (Claude Code supports it).
• /loop, /deslop, /babysit slash references in skill bodies — they all resolve in Claude Code now.
• The principle/playbook structure and every word of the principles themselves.

What's deliberately not ported

• automations/benny/ (upstream 0452e08, the only pstack change between e46364b and v0.10.0) — a dormant Slack issue-triage and reproduce-and-fix automation pack built on Cursor's event-triggered automations. It registers no slash skills even upstream, so excluding it changes nothing about the ported plugin's behavior. Porting it would mean translating Cursor's event-trigger runtime to Claude Code's polling-based scheduled agents plus Slack and tracker plumbing — speculative infrastructure with no local user. Revisit if an unattended issue-intake stream materialises; the likely first step is porting the triage skill onto a single Claude scheduled agent, not the whole pack.
• cursor-team-kit beyond the seven imported skills — the rest either duplicate Claude Code built-ins (verify-this → the verify skill and built-in verification discipline; check-compiler-errors → LSP diagnostics; control-cli/control-ui → run/verify, already the substitution targets) or overlap skills this port ships (loop-on-ci, review-and-ship, weekly-review vs babysit, fix-ci, make-pr-easy-to-review, what-did-i-get-done). pr-review-canvas is Cursor-UI-specific.

Forking note

Editing skill bodies forks this from upstream. Re-syncing to a future pstack release means re-applying the substitution table. The full re-port recipe is in CHANGES.md.

License

MIT. Three upstream LICENSE files are preserved:

• LICENSE — pstack (Lauren Tan)
• LICENSE-cursor-team-kit — Cursor (covers the deslop and thermo-nuclear-code-quality-review skills)
• LICENSE-superpowers — superpowers, Jesse Vincent (covers the vendored hooks/run-hook.cmd)