When I audited what the agent was actually doing during the first 30 minutes of a project, roughly 70% of the token burn went to two things:

1. Blind Repo Orientation (~20,000 tokens): Running grep and reading 25–30 files every session just to figure out where routes, auth helpers, and database schemas live.
2. Rewriting the "Money Loop" (~35,000–50,000 tokens): Rewriting Supabase auth middleware, credit deduction tables, and Stripe / Dodo Payments webhook verification—and usually crashing locally because I hadn't set up 12 live .env API keys yet.

To fix this for my own workflow, I stripped everything down into a 4-command CLI and multi-agent SKILL.md called vstacks.

Here is how the 4 commands work under the hood.

1. vstacks new (The Zero-API-Key Money Loop)

Most starter kits crash on npm run dev until you create live projects on Supabase, Stripe, and OpenAI and paste in a dozen keys. That breaks an AI agent's autonomous test loop.

vstacks new MySaas --payments dodo-payments --yes

This scaffolds a Next.js App Router + Supabase + Tailwind app where the entire money loop (Sign-in, Credits, Payments, AI Chat, Waitlist, /terms, /privacy, sitemap.xml) is controlled by a single src/config.ts.

How it runs with 0 API keys:

• If .env keys are blank, it automatically falls back to .vstacks/dev-db.json and mock preview sessions.
• Default src/app/page.tsx renders an interactive Dev Control Panel with live credit counters, a 1-click simulated payment webhook (POST /api/payments/dev-simulate-webhook) to test upgrading a user to Pro, and a simulated AI chat box.

2. vstacks swap (1-Second Provider Hot-Swapping)

If you start with Stripe and decide to switch to Dodo Payments, Polar, or LemonSqueezy (or swap AI between OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and OpenRouter), asking an agent to refactor your SDK calls usually leaves broken imports across 10 files.

vstacks swap payments stripe

Because vstacks isolates external providers behind clean slot facades and ambient TypeScript definitions (src/env.d.ts), vstacks swap swaps the provider in under 1 second, updates your orientation map, preserves DB migrations, and passes tsc --noEmit with 0 TypeScript errors and zero changes to your UI code.

3. vstacks map (229ms Static Repo Orientation)

Instead of paying your agent to explore your folder tree on every new prompt:

vstacks map

This runs a fault-tolerant regex scan across any JS/TS repo in ~229ms (even projects not created with vstacks) and outputs .vstacks/MAP.md—a compact 6-section index of your routes, DB tables, active facades, and required env vars.

Combined with SKILL.md (which auto-registers across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and Antigravity), your agent knows your entire architecture on Turn 1.

4. vstacks check (Pre-Ship Guardrails)

Coding agents love forgetting "use client" on interactive components or importing raw server SDKs inside client files.

• vstacks check --fix auto-prepends missing "use client" directives, syncs .env keys, and blocks raw SDK imports in UI (W_FACADE_BYPASS).
• vstacks check --ship audits your repo before deployment for leaked live secrets (sk_live_, whsec_), client-side private env access, hardcoded localhost URLs, and unverified webhooks.

See How Many Tokens Your Workflow Is Burning

👉 Check out vstacks & the Token Calculator here