Delivery discipline for AI agents. Four habits, one command.
Most people run AI coding agents like slot machines: prompt → pull the lever → hope. The agent writes code 10× faster than you review it, declares itself done, and you find out later. We would never accept that from a junior engineer — we accept it from our tools every day.
Stackwich is 15 years of delivery coaching — plan → build → test → review, the oldest idea in software — compressed into standing policy for Claude Code. Install it once and every future session works this way.
- Meta-prompt every delegation. Subagents get context — the why, what's been ruled out, exact files and lines — never terse commands. You don't delegate understanding.
- Sandwich risky work. Anything hard to reverse, production-touching, or cross-repo goes plan → execute → verify → review. Mandatory, not vibes.
- Loop by default. Recurring work runs on
/loop, not a re-run-it-by-hand habit. - Engineer your context. Research and read-heavy scans fork off the main thread so raw output never pollutes it; memory, plans, and tasks each do their own job.
Cost discipline isn't a fifth habit — it's built into the other four: cheap models grind, expensive models only plan and review, and nothing already established gets re-derived.
| Stage | Agent | Model | Contract |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🍞 Plan | advisor |
opus | Read-only. Exact files, exact edits, a verification command per step. Flags anything irreversible. |
| 🥩 Execute | executor |
haiku | Mechanical and exact. No redesigns, no improvising, no suffixed file copies. |
| 🧪 Verify | verifier |
sonnet | Runs the project's real tests/lint/build. GATE: PASS or GATE: FAIL — never repairs. |
| 🍞 Review | advisor |
opus | Diff vs. plan, conventions, blast radius. APPROVE or REVISE: <list>. |
Small, reversible changes skip the ceremony — the verifier alone closes the loop. If the same verification fails twice, iteration stops and escalates to the advisor. Speed without a gate is just faster mistakes.
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/stackwich && \
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ovhirup/stackwich/main/SKILL.md \
-o ~/.claude/skills/stackwich/SKILL.mdThen, inside any Claude Code session:
/stackwich
The skill does the rest interactively: asks for scope, writes the policy, offers the three agents. Run /agents afterwards to confirm advisor, executor, and verifier are picked up.
| Path | What |
|---|---|
<scope>/CLAUDE.md |
The operating policy, fenced between <!-- stackwich:v1 --> markers — updates in place, never duplicates |
<scope>/agents/advisor.md |
Read-only planner/reviewer (opus) |
<scope>/agents/executor.md |
Cheap mechanical executor (haiku) |
<scope>/agents/verifier.md |
PASS/FAIL verification gate (sonnet) |
<scope> is ~/.claude (user level — every project, the recommended default) or ./.claude (this project only). Already have your own plan/execute/verify agents? Keep them — Stackwich is the policy; the three files are just a default implementation, and the installer handles name collisions.
rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/stackwich
rm -f ~/.claude/agents/{advisor,executor,verifier}.md…and delete the <!-- stackwich:v1 --> … <!-- /stackwich:v1 --> block from your CLAUDE.md.
Does it audit my existing code? No. It's forward-looking policy — it changes how future work gets done, nothing retroactive.
Will it slow me down? Only where slow is the point. Small, reversible edits run exactly as before; the full sandwich fires only when a change is hard to reverse, touches shared systems, or spans repos.
Why these three models? Tiering is the cost control: opus judgment where it pays (plan/review), haiku hands where it doesn't (mechanical edits), sonnet in between as the gate. Swap models in the agent frontmatter if your stack differs.
Built by Abhirup Banerjee (@ovhirup) — AI-native Agile coach; SAFe, PI Planning, and large BFSI delivery programs. Stackwich is that delivery discipline, ported to agents.
MIT — see LICENSE. If it saves you a bad merge, a ⭐ is appreciated.