stack_101 — the tools, explained
The HAL Stack runs on 26+ tools most people have never had explained to them. This directory covers what each one actually is, what it competes with, and the specific job it does for Two Birds Innovation.
how_the_stack_works — the concepts, explained
The tool cards below use some shorthand. Here it is in plain English first.
A text-based way to give a computer instructions by typing commands, instead of clicking buttons in an app. Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Gemini all run inside one of these.
An AI model plus the tool that lets it work: it can read files, write code, run programs and save changes to a project. The stack runs four of them (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Antigravity with Gemini) and shares the work between them.
The scheduler that decides which job runs next and which engine gets it. It runs on an operating-system timer, so it keeps working when a terminal is closed or a laptop restarts.
A limit on how much of the two main paid AI accounts (Claude and Codex) the stack may use in a week. Past the cap an engine is skipped until its weekly reset, so no subscription is run dry and no single engine becomes a point of failure.
A throwaway clone of the project that an engine works in. It never touches the live files, it can only edit the paths its job declares, and its result is checked before it is allowed to land.
A standard plug that lets an AI engine connect to outside tools and services, like Notion or GitHub, so it can read and write real data there, not just talk about it.
A packaged set of instructions for one specific job that an engine can load on demand, instead of being re-explained the same thing from scratch every time.
An AI that can carry out a multi-step task on its own: deciding what to do next, using tools, and finishing the job, rather than just answering one question.
The surrounding system of rules, guardrails and permissions that decides what an AI agent is and is not allowed to do while it works.
The point where a person has to decide. Everything an agent can safely handle on its own never reaches a human; what does reach one is the judgment calls, approvals and anything destructive.
Speech is turned into text on your own machine, so voice recordings are never sent to a cloud service. Dictation, Telegram voice notes and the mobile agent all work this way.
Owning and controlling your own tools and data so the business keeps running even if a paid vendor disappears, changes its pricing, or shuts a service down.
Static HTML means a website built from plain files with no server-side app running behind it: simple, fast, nothing to keep patched. GitHub Pages is a free service that turns a Git repository into a live website.
A batch of automated tasks (tests, syncs, audits, recounting the numbers on the site) that runs on a schedule, usually around 2am, so the results are ready without anyone having to sit and watch it happen.
A named AI "role" with a specific point of view or expertise, used to get a more focused opinion on a decision.
A quick automated check that the basics still work (the page loads, the button clicks) before trusting a bigger change.
A safety limit that caps how many actions an AI agent can take in one go, so a mistake can not spiral into an unstoppable loop.
Figma is a collaborative web-based application for user interface design. It supports the design of mobile apps, websites, and illustrations, with 13 million users as of 2025. It is the product of the eponymous Figma, Inc., founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace.
How we use it Design handoff and mockup review via the Figma MCP — the agent reads design context straight from files.
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Canva, Inc. is an Australian multinational software company launched in 2013. Its parent company, Canva, Inc., is domiciled in Delaware, United States. The platform provides a graphic design platform to create visual content for presentations, websites, and other digital products. Its uses include templates for presentations, posters, and social media content, as well as photo and video editing functionality.
How we use it Quick branded graphics and one-pagers generated agent-side through the Canva MCP.
Similar tools Adobe Express · Piktochart
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Miro is a collaborative online platform designed to support teams in planning and execution across different locations and time zones. It is used for a variety of purposes, including brainstorming, agile planning, customer journey mapping, product design, and remote workshops. As of 2025, the platform is utilized by over 90 million users and more than 250,000 organizations worldwide.
How we use it Whiteboard diagrams and planning boards the agent can create and read via MCP.
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Notion is a productivity and note-taking application developed by Notion Labs, Inc. It serves as a workspace for notetaking, knowledge management, data organization, and project and task tracking. It was first released in 2016 and is available on the web and as desktop and mobile apps. The company is headquartered in San Francisco.
How we use it The operational backbone — sprint queue, human backlog, and job pipeline all live in Notion, read and written by the agent.
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Slack is a cloud-based team communication platform developed by Slack Technologies, which has been owned by Salesforce since 2021. Slack uses a freemium model. Slack is primarily offered as a business-to-business service, with its user base being predominantly team-based businesses while its features are focused on business administration and communication.
How we use it Webhook alerts from overnight builds land in Slack so failures are visible by morning.
Similar tools Microsoft Teams · Discord
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
GitHub is a proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control, and GitHub itself provides access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous integration, and wikis for every project. GitHub, headquartered in San Francisco, is operated by Github, Inc., a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.
How we use it Every product ships from GitHub — repos, Actions CI, and free static hosting on GitHub Pages.
Similar tools GitLab · Codeberg
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Playwright is an open-source automation library for browser testing and web scraping developed by Microsoft and launched on 31 January 2020, which has since become popular among programmers and web developers.
How we use it Nightly headless-browser smoke tests against every live product — no sprint is Done until its Playwright spec passes.
Similar tools Cypress · Selenium
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Task Scheduler is a job scheduler in Microsoft Windows that launches computer programs or scripts at pre-defined times or after specified time intervals. Microsoft introduced this component in the Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 as System Agent. Its core component is an eponymous Windows service. The Windows Task Scheduler infrastructure is the basis for the Windows PowerShell scheduled jobs feature introduced with PowerShell v3.
How we use it Fires the 2am overnight build locally — no cloud cron service, no subscription, no external dependency.
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Cloudflare, Inc., is an American technology company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that provides a range of internet services, including content delivery network (CDN) services, cloud cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and ICANN-accredited domain registration. The company's services act primarily as a reverse proxy between website visitors and a customer's hosting provider, improving performance and protecting against malicious traffic.
How we use it Workers and KV power the small server-side pieces (LLM proxy, email capture) the static sites can't do alone.
Similar tools Fastly · Amazon CloudFront
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Vercel Inc. is an American cloud application company. The company created and maintains the Next.js web development framework.
How we use it Connected via MCP for deploy tooling; production hosting stays on GitHub Pages at $0.
Similar tools Netlify · Cloudflare Pages
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Stripe, LLC is an Irish-American multinational financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company dual-headquartered in South San Francisco, California, United States, and Dublin, Ireland. The company primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.
How we use it Payments rail on standby for product commercialization — wired via MCP before a single invoice exists.
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Zapier is an American software company that provides a platform for business process automation and application integration services. Its platform allows users to move data across web-based applications, automate tasks, and incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into workflows and systems. The company was founded in 2011, and officially launched in 2012 as part of the Y Combinator startup accelerator program. As a low-code/no-code platform, Zapier is intended for users with minimal to moderate technical knowledge. As of 2026, the platform has expanded its ecosystem to support integrations across more than 9,000 distinct web applications, facilitating over 66,000 individual automated triggers and actions.
How we use it Bridge to 9,000+ apps for the rare integration that has no direct MCP; self-hosted n8n is the sovereign fallback.
Similar tools n8n
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Gmail is a mailbox provider by Google. It is the largest email service worldwide, with 1.8 billion users. It is accessible via a web browser (webmail), mobile app, or through third-party email clients via the POP and IMAP protocols. Users can also connect non-Gmail e-mail accounts to their Gmail inbox. The service was launched as a beta version in 2004. It came out of beta in 2009.
How we use it The agent reads and drafts email via the Gmail MCP; outbound automation sends through plain smtplib.
Similar tools Outlook · Proton Mail
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
A command-line AI coding assistant from Anthropic. You give it a goal in plain English; it reads the project, edits files, runs commands and commits the result.
How we use it The primary terminal agent and the governance spine: it orchestrates the work, hands jobs to the other engines, and holds the rules every engine is held to.
OpenAI's command-line coding agent. It reads a project, makes changes and runs tests from a terminal.
How we use it The overnight workhorse: runs unattended jobs in disposable copies of the repo, on an existing ChatGPT subscription (ADR-0067).
Similar tools Claude Code · OpenCode
An open-source (MIT) AI coding agent for the terminal that works with 75+ model providers, including models that run on your own machine.
How we use it Handles browser-based work and open models through the local OmniRoute gateway on an OpenCode Go subscription. Also the free, open-source second opinion.
Similar tools Aider · Claude Code
Google's desktop environment for working with AI coding agents. It puts several frontier models in one place, including Gemini, Claude-class and open models.
How we use it Used as an IDE and as a command-line tool (agy) on an existing Google AI Pro plan. It offers Gemini, Claude Opus and Sonnet, and GPT-OSS models without drawing on the personal Anthropic or OpenAI subscriptions, and the CLI has a non-interactive print mode. The older unattended API-key route is paused.
A self-hosted gateway that lets coding tools reach many AI models through one local address, and fall back between them when one runs out.
How we use it Reaches the OpenCode Go model bundle and handles overflow when a main engine is at its limit (ADR-0063, ADR-0065). Bound to the private network only.
Similar tools LiteLLM · OpenRouter
Whisper is a machine learning model for speech recognition and transcription, created by OpenAI and first released as open-source software in September 2022.
How we use it Local speech-to-text for Ctrl+Space dictation and for Telegram voice notes. Audio never leaves the machine (ADR-0085).
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
A small open-weight text-to-speech model that runs on an ordinary computer and produces natural-sounding speech.
How we use it Speaks replies aloud, locally, with Windows text-to-speech as the fallback.
Similar tools Piper
Telegram is a Russian-Emirati cloud-based, cross-platform social media and instant messaging (IM) service. It launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android on 20 October 2013. It allows users to exchange messages, share media and files, and hold private and group voice or video calls as well as public livestreams. It is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, Wear OS, watchOS and web browsers. Telegram offers end-to-end encryption in voice and video calls, and optionally in private chats if both participants use a mobile device.
How we use it A private bot receives voice notes, videos and links from a phone, and sends alerts and confirmations back (Scribe intake and Project Harrier).
Similar tools Signal · WhatsApp
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
A Canadian internet phone provider that sells local numbers, call forwarding and voicemail by the month.
How we use it The dedicated business phone line, so a personal number is not on public profiles. Inbound texts are forwarded to email.
Similar tools Twilio
n8n is a workflow automation platform and the Berlin company, n8n GmbH, that develops it. Founded by Jan Oberhauser and first released publicly in 2019, n8n lets users build automations by wiring together applications, services and AI models in a visual, node-based editor, with the option to use custom JavaScript or Python. It runs as a self-hosted application or as a managed cloud service, and has been described in coverage as a source-available alternative to hosted tools such as Zapier and Make.
How we use it Self-hosted workflow glue for the few integrations that have no direct tool. The sovereign fallback to Zapier.
Similar tools Zapier
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Tailscale Inc. is a software company based in Toronto, Ontario. Tailscale develops an open-source software-defined mesh virtual private network (VPN) and a web-based management service. The company provides a zero config VPN as a service under the same name.
How we use it Joins the four machines into one private network so any of them can be reached, repaired and run from another, with no ports opened to the internet.
Similar tools ZeroTier · Headscale
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Gemini Notebook is an online research and note-taking retrieval-augmented generation tool developed by Google Labs that uses artificial intelligence (AI), specifically Google Gemini, to assist users in interacting with their documents.
How we use it Research notebooks the agents can question through a pinned, community-maintained connector. Read and research access only.
Similar tools Notion AI
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Google Drive is a file-hosting service and synchronization service developed by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud, synchronize files across devices, and share files. In addition to a web interface, Google Drive offers apps with offline capabilities for Windows and macOS computers, and Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. Google Drive encompasses Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, which are a part of the Google Docs Editors office suite that allows collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, and more. Files created and edited through the Google Docs suite are saved in Google Drive.
How we use it Where finished documents land as formatted Google Docs, and where calendar invites are generated, so every deliverable opens on any device.
Similar tools Microsoft OneDrive · Nextcloud
Summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
No tools match that search.