ay-stack

A content system for Marketing Creative Technologists — the people who live at the intersection of brand storytelling, performance marketing, and generative AI.

ay-stack turns Claude Code (or any SKILL.md-compatible agent) into your creative department AND your engineering team. All of gstack's engineering workflow skills — QA, review, ship, deploy, design, browser — plus eight new content specialists: a copywriter who nails brand voice across platforms, an AI art director who crafts production-ready image prompts, a video director who writes scripts and gen-AI shot lists, and a content strategist who reviews everything before it ships.

Forked from gstack by Garry Tan. Rebuilt for people who ship both code and creative.

Who this is for:

• Creative Technologists — you build campaigns, not just apps. You need an AI collaborator that thinks in hooks, not functions.
• Performance Marketers — scaling ad creative across platforms, formats, and audiences. One brief, dozens of variations.
• Brand & Content Teams — defining voice, producing copy, and maintaining consistency at volume.
• Solo Creators & Freelancers — doing the work of an agency with AI as your team.
• Founders and CEOs — ship product AND marketing from one terminal.

Quick Start

Requirements: Claude Code, Git, Bun v1.0+ (for browser/QA skills)

Step 1: Install on your machine

Open Claude Code and paste this:

Install ay-stack: run git clone https://github.com/salakoayoola/ay-stack.git ~/.claude/skills/ay-stack && cd ~/.claude/skills/ay-stack && ./setup then add an "ay-stack" section to CLAUDE.md listing the available skills: /office-hours, /plan-ceo-review, /plan-eng-review, /plan-design-review, /design-consultation, /review, /ship, /land-and-deploy, /canary, /benchmark, /browse, /qa, /qa-only, /design-review, /setup-browser-cookies, /setup-deploy, /retro, /investigate, /document-release, /codex, /careful, /freeze, /guard, /unfreeze, /gstack-upgrade, /ay-stack, /creative-brief, /brand-voice-brainstorm, /content-review, /ad-copy, /web-copy, /video-script, /ai-image-prompter, /ai-video-prompter.

Step 2: Add to your repo so teammates get it (optional)

Add ay-stack to this project: run cp -Rf ~/.claude/skills/ay-stack .claude/skills/ay-stack && rm -rf .claude/skills/ay-stack/.git && cd .claude/skills/ay-stack && ./setup then add an "ay-stack" section to this project's CLAUDE.md listing all available skills.

Codex, Gemini CLI, or Cursor

ay-stack works on any agent that supports the SKILL.md standard. Skills live in .agents/skills/ and are discovered automatically.

git clone https://github.com/salakoayoola/ay-stack.git ~/.codex/skills/ay-stack
cd ~/.codex/skills/ay-stack && ./setup --host codex

The Two Sprints

ay-stack supports two workflows that reinforce each other:

The Engineering Sprint (from gstack)

Think → Plan → Build → Review → Test → Ship → Reflect

Skill	Your specialist	What they do
/office-hours	YC Office Hours	Six forcing questions that reframe your product before you write code
/plan-ceo-review	CEO / Founder	Rethink the problem. Find the 10-star product.
/plan-eng-review	Eng Manager	Lock in architecture, data flow, diagrams, edge cases
/plan-design-review	Senior Designer	Rates each design dimension 0-10, explains what a 10 looks like
/design-consultation	Design Partner	Build a complete design system from scratch
/review	Staff Engineer	Find the bugs that pass CI but blow up in production
/investigate	Debugger	Systematic root-cause debugging. No fixes without investigation.
/design-review	Designer Who Codes	Visual audit, then fixes what it finds with atomic commits
/qa	QA Lead	Test your app, find bugs, fix them, re-verify
/qa-only	QA Reporter	Same methodology, report only — no code changes
/ship	Release Engineer	Sync main, run tests, audit coverage, push, open PR
/land-and-deploy	Release Engineer	Merge PR → deploy → canary verify. One command.
/canary	SRE	Post-deploy monitoring loop
/benchmark	Performance Engineer	Baseline page load times, Core Web Vitals, bundle sizes
/document-release	Technical Writer	Update all project docs to match what shipped
/retro	Eng Manager	Team-aware weekly retro with per-person breakdowns
/browse	QA Engineer	Real Chromium browser. Real clicks. Real screenshots. ~100ms.
/setup-browser-cookies	Session Manager	Import cookies from your real browser for authenticated testing

The Content Sprint (ay-stack originals)

Brief → Voice → Write → Prompt Visuals → Script Video → Review

Skill	Your specialist	What they do
/ay-stack	Campaign Pipeline	Full content pipeline in one command — orchestrates brand voice, creative brief, copy production, visual prompts, and content review. Brief to campaign-ready assets.
/creative-brief	Strategist	Generate a structured brief from a conversation. Captures objective, audience, key message, tone, deliverables. Feeds into every downstream content skill.
/brand-voice-brainstorm	Brand Strategist	Define, explore, and refine your brand's tone of voice through structured dialogue. Produces a validated brand voice document.
/ad-copy	Performance Copywriter	Write high-converting ad copy for Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, and display. Generates hook variations, CTAs, and platform-native formats.
/web-copy	Website Copywriter	Write conversion-focused website copy — hero sections, landing pages, product pages, CTAs, microcopy. Structured for scanning, SEO, and action.
/video-script	Video Director	Write scripts for ad spots, explainers, UGC-style content, social video. Includes shot direction, timing, on-screen text, and VO.
/ai-image-prompter	AI Art Director	Craft production-ready prompts for Midjourney, DALL-E, Flux, Ideogram. Aspect ratios, styles, lighting, composition, model-specific syntax.
/ai-video-prompter	AI Motion Director	Write prompts for Sora, Runway Gen-3/4, Kling, Minimax, Veo. Camera movement, temporal coherence, model-specific parameters.
/content-review	Creative Director	Review any content — ad copy, web page, video script, social post — against brand voice, audience fit, and platform best practices. Produces rewrites, not notes.

Power Tools (from gstack)

Skill	What it does
/codex	Independent code review from OpenAI Codex CLI. Three modes: review, challenge, consult.
/careful	Safety guardrails — warns before destructive commands
/freeze	Lock file edits to one directory
/guard	Full safety — /careful + /freeze
/unfreeze	Remove the freeze boundary
/setup-deploy	One-time deploy configuration
/gstack-upgrade	Upgrade the gstack core to latest

See It Work

One command: /ay-stack

You:    I need a full campaign for a new fintech savings product targeting Gen Z.
You:    /ay-stack

Claude: FOUNDATION CHECK — no brand voice or brief found. Let's build them.

Phase 0: Foundation
        [asks discovery questions → proposes 3 voice directions → refines]
        [produces brand voice guide: personality, attributes, tone by channel]
        [asks 6 brief questions — product, audience, proof, tone, deliverables]
        [produces structured brief: objective, persona, key message, constraints]

Phase 1: Production
        [reads brief deliverables, runs each content skill at full depth]
        Ad copy:      Meta Feed (5 hooks), Stories (3 variants), TikTok (3 hooks)
        Web copy:     Landing page — hero → problem → solution → proof → CTA
        Video script: TikTok 15s with timed visual/audio/text columns

Phase 2: Visuals
        [generates AI prompts for every visual asset]
        Image prompts: Midjourney v6.1 — product shots, lifestyle, ad creative
        Video prompts: Runway Gen-3 — shot-by-shot with camera + temporal flow

Phase 3: Review
        [audits everything against brief + voice guide]
        Flags a hook that's too formal for Gen Z → rewrites it
        Stronger CTA on Stories variant → applied
        Cross-content consistency: 9/10

Phase 4: Campaign Deck
        CAMPAIGN SCORE: 8.5/10 | 14 content pieces | 8 visual prompts
        Status: APPROVED

You:    /qa https://staging.mysite.com
Claude: [opens real browser, clicks through, finds a broken CTA link, fixes it]

One command. Full campaign. Landing page. QA tested. That's the point.

Or run skills individually

/creative-brief          → structured brief from a conversation
/brand-voice-brainstorm  → define your brand's tone of voice
/ad-copy                 → platform-native ad copy with hook variations
/web-copy                → section-by-section page copy with microcopy
/video-script            → timed production-ready scripts
/ai-image-prompter       → Midjourney/DALL-E/Flux prompts
/ai-video-prompter       → Sora/Runway/Kling prompts
/content-review          → creative director review with rewrites

Companion Skills (from the ecosystem)

ay-stack pairs well with these community skills from skills.sh:

Skill	Install	What it adds
copywriting	npx skills add skills.volces.com@copywriting -g -y	General-purpose copywriting frameworks
video-production	npx skills add casper-studios/casper-marketplace@video-production -g -y	Video production workflow
text-to-image-prompt-optimizer	npx skills add manzxiao/text-to-image-prompt-optimizer@text-to-image-prompt-optimizer -g -y	Prompt refinement for image models
brand-voice-coach	npx skills add eddiebe147/claude-settings@brand-voice-coach -g -y	Ongoing brand voice checking
content-strategist	npx skills add borghei/claude-skills@content-strategist -g -y	Content calendar and strategy

Principles

1. Brand voice is infrastructure. Every content skill reads the voice guide. Consistency at volume is the product.
2. Resonance over cleverness. Copy that connects beats copy that impresses other copywriters.
3. Platform-native, not platform-agnostic. A TikTok hook is not a LinkedIn headline. Every skill knows the difference.
4. Show, don't strategy. Every skill produces usable output — actual copy, actual prompts, actual scripts.
5. Review before ship. /content-review exists because volume without quality is spam.
6. Boil the lake. When AI makes the marginal cost of completeness near-zero, do the complete thing. (From gstack ethos)

Docs

Doc	What it covers
Skill Deep Dives	Philosophy and examples for every gstack engineering skill
Builder Ethos	Philosophy: Boil the Lake, Search Before Building, three layers of knowledge
Architecture	Design decisions and system internals
Browser Reference	Full command reference for /browse
Contributing	Dev setup, testing, contributor mode
Changelog	What's new in every version

License

MIT. Free forever. Fork it. Improve it. Make it yours.