Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx agentmods add skills/nicknisi/dotfiles/gh-stacknpx skills add nicknisi/dotfiles --skill gh-stackgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nicknisi/dotfilesWhat it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00080 | $0.02100 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00040 | $0.01050 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00016 | $0.00420 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00008 | $0.00210 |
Grade A, and why
gh-stack scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
This is a copy
100% identical to gh-stack — 48 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 184 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
gh-stack
gh stack is a GitHub CLI extension for stacked branches and pull
requests. A stack is an ordered chain of branches rooted on a trunk, where each branch has one PR
based on the branch below it, so a reviewer sees only that layer's diff.
gh stack prints a stack trunk-first, left to right:
(main) <- auth <- api <- frontend
Left is the bottom, right is the top. auth is based on main and merges first;
frontend merges last. up moves toward the top, away from trunk; down moves toward it.
Foundational work belongs at the bottom, code that depends on it above. For how to choose the
layers, read references/stack-design.md.
Setup
gh extension install github/gh-stack
git config rerere.enabled true # remember conflict resolutions
git config remote.pushDefault origin # required if the repo has more than one remote
Non-interactive use
gh stack branches on whether stdout is a TTY. Piped, most commands error cleanly or print
static text; under a PTY the same commands open a prompt or a full-screen TUI and block forever.
Agent harnesses differ, so always pass the flags below instead of relying on that detection.
Multiple remotes: never run push, submit, sync, rebase, or link without
--remote <name> unless remote.pushDefault is configured. checkout and trunk have no
--remote flag and require the config.
| Always run | Never run bare | Why |
|---|---|---|
gh stack view --json |
gh stack view |
opens a TUI under a PTY |
gh stack submit --auto |
gh stack submit |
prompts for a title per new PR |
gh stack merge <target> --yes |
gh pr merge |
gh pr merge cannot merge a stack |
gh stack init <branch>... |
gh stack init |
prompts for branch names |
gh stack add <branch> |
gh stack add |
prompts for a name, and fails even when piped |
gh stack checkout <target> |
gh stack checkout |
opens a selection menu |
gh stack up / down / top / bottom |
gh stack switch |
switch is menu-only |
| — | gh stack modify |
TUI-only, no non-interactive path |
What ships with it
3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 2d ago First seen · 184 lines · 80 tokens per session scan A 1ff5a23a7f66
gh-stack is a skill published in the GitHub repository nicknisi/dotfiles (2,986 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 80 tokens to every session and 2,100 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to gh-stack, differing in 48 lines, and is treated as a copy.
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