The GUS Stack — Go, Unix, SQLite

Noah Zoschke proposes the GUS Stack — Go, Unix, SQLite — as a simple, well-designed foundation for building apps quickly, particularly when paired with AI coding agents. The argument is that a shared, minimal stack eliminates the friction of rebuilding scaffolding from scratch each time.

Unix provides the operating system layer across development (macOS/Darwin) and deployment (Linux on platforms like fly.io or Hetzner). SQLite is chosen for its embedded, single-file design and ubiquity. Go contributes a batteries-included standard library, stable syntax, and fast single-binary compilation.

Zoschke prefers server-side rendering with HTMX over the TypeScript-heavy "GUTS" variant promoted by exe.dev. His recommended Go ecosystem includes templ for type-safe HTML templates, sqlc for type-safe SQL-to-Go code generation, modernc.org/sqlite for a pure-Go SQLite driver, goose for migrations, and dbos for durable workflows.

A notable section covers using headless Chrome (via the rod library and rodney CLI) to give AI agents visual feedback on rendered pages. Writing DOM-state assertions against happy-path click-throughs lets agents produce features that work on the first attempt and don't regress.

A GitHub template at github.com/housecat-inc/scratch is offered as a starting point.