The Solo Engineering Team: My Claude Code Setup
It has been more than 10 years since I was committing code regularly but over the last 4 months, I have custom built 80% of the startup investor stack, using only one app: Claude. All this without interfering with my regular job, as I also made 17 investments during the same time. Here's my exact setup and approach:
1. All Tasks in Claude Code
I use Claude's Code tab for almost all my tasks, from spreadsheets to coding. I also don't leave tasks in my list, all new ideas go straight into Claude Code for me to address when I can.
2. Easy Start
I don't want to think about the right approach to a task, so I wrote a Claude 'skill' that does the work for me. I begin every new session with /lets-start <my idea or problem> and let Claude select the right approach using the gstack skills package. Completely free and open source.
3. All the Plans
Gstack offers brainstorming and planning modes before anything is built. I do everything. Office hours, CEO review, design review and engineering review; then adversarial reviews of those by ChatGPT's Codex (optional, gstack will set this up for you). I want the best plan possible, with minimal effort from me.
4. Concurrency is the Win
All this planning and effort may seem like overkill or a slower approach for many tasks. That is true but the productivity gains come from progressing on *all* your tasks concurrently not speeding up individual tasks.
5. Just Hit Recommended
The side effect of heavy planning is that Claude will have lots of questions. I choose the recommended route unless it would mean missing a gstack skill, in which case, I choose the gstack skill option to ensure we have done everything possible.
6. Verify Before Assert
Stopping Claude from making assumptions is a constant battle. The AI knows it's smart but is often wrong, so /lets-start includes a global setting for Claude to ensure it verifies something is true before assuming it. However, you should still expect to see this behavior. When it occurs, ask Claude to save to memory that it must verify before asserting. I had to do this many times.
7. Parallelize Large Projects
If I'm building a medium or large application from scratch, the plan could take many hours or even days to implement. I don't like waiting, so /lets-start now includes a /parallelize skill that breaks the plan into multiple, distinct session prompts, allowing you to run them concurrently and complete the work faster. Be warned: this requires more attention as you're managing numerous sessions per project.
8. Full Testing
Agentic coding carries numerous security risks, and there are already high-profile examples of hacks and data leaks. I don't want to deal with any of that, so I wrote a skill to /autoclean the code for me. It will first audit the existing tests and create new ones if needed, then it will clean up any sloppy code and finally it will pass the code to gstack's security review.
9. Bug Fixing
Bugs are an unavoidable part of the engineering process. However, when bugs are fixed, I always ask Claude to add regression tests to ensure they can't recur. If you don't stop the app from making the same mistake twice, it will happily take the opportunity.
10. Persistence
Incomplete apps and frequent bugs make using Claude a potentially frustrating experience requiring significant iteration, but the potential rewards are worth your time. Once it works well for you, the productivity gains will be massive.
Anyone can now do the work of an entire engineering team for ~$200/month. This is the time to build!
Prompt to install lets-start: https://github.com/ashrust/lets-start-skill; lets-start will install gstack for you too.
#GoalSetting