bimstack

"Government should only do what only government can do." – GOV.UK Design Principle 2

bimstack is how the GovTech Barbados team builds digital services with Claude. Five opinionated specialists – Service Designer, Content & Interaction Designer, Delivery Manager, Developer, and Cybersecurity Engineer – anchored to the Barbados Digital Service Standards, the GOV.UK Design Principles, and the GDS Way.

It's a process, not a collection of tools. It bakes in the way GovTech Barbados builds services so that a team can pick it up on day one and ship work that already conforms to the standards.

Who this is for

• Civil servants building digital services for Barbados
• Vendors delivering on contract for the Government of Barbados
• Other Caribbean digital teams wanting an opinionated starting point inspired by the GDS Way
• Anyone shipping on alpha.gov.bb who wants their work to pass the Standards on the first try

The sprint

Listen → Map → Make → Test → Ship → Show → Iterate

Seven verbs. Every sprint, every phase, every service.

• Listen – user research, stakeholder interviews, front-line shadowing
• Map – journeys, blueprints, ecosystems, problem statements
• Make – plain-language copy, GovBB prototypes, production code
• Test – usability, accessibility, security, performance
• Ship – discovery → alpha → beta → live, one small release at a time
• Show – weeknotes, show-and-tells, source in the open
• Iterate – continuously, forever, while the citizen still needs the service

The team

Specialist	What they do	Standards they own
Service designer	Research, journey maps, blueprints, problem statements, discovery	1, 5, 10
Content & interaction designer	Plain language, UX copy, prototypes on alpha.gov.bb, accessibility	3, 4, 5, 12
Delivery manager	Sprints, weeknotes, standards assessment, phase gates, sustainability	2, 8, 9, 13
Developer	GovBB tech, opinionated stack, lookups, observability, in-the-open code	5, 6, 7, 13
Cyber engineer	Threat models, DPIA, secure-by-design, pen tests, incident runbooks	11

Each agent reads the same references, cites the same standards by number, and hands off cleanly to the next. None of them is the boss. The team owns the work.

What's in the box

bimstack/
├── README.md                 you are here
├── MANUAL.md                 single onboarding doc for new colleagues
├── PLAYBOOK.md               how a team uses bimstack day to day, phase by phase
├── ETHOS.md                  the eight ways of working
├── AGENTS.md                 detailed roster of the five specialists
├── WORKFLOW.md               the sprint mantra, in detail
├── CONTRIBUTING.md           how to extend bimstack
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── LICENSE                   MIT
├── .claude-plugin/
│   └── plugin.json           the installable manifest
├── agents/                   the five specialists
│   ├── service-designer.md
│   ├── content-designer.md
│   ├── delivery-manager.md
│   ├── developer.md
│   └── cyber-engineer.md
├── commands/                 slash commands the team uses every week
│   ├── weeknote.md
│   ├── assess.md
│   ├── discover.md
│   ├── build.md
│   ├── iterate.md
│   ├── productionise.md
│   ├── show.md
│   ├── plain-language.md
│   └── threat-model.md
├── skills/                   shared skills the agents call into
│   ├── service-standard-assessment/
│   ├── plain-language-check/
│   ├── weeknote/
│   ├── discovery-kit/
│   ├── research-coach/       router + mentor across the research cycle
│   ├── research-planning/    objectives first, then the discussion guide
│   ├── govtech-research-plans/ full three-part research plan as one .docx
│   ├── transcript-analysis/  behaviour over opinion, repo cross-referencing
│   ├── synthesize-research/  raw study data → layered findings package
│   ├── research-presenting/  findings the delivery team will act on
│   ├── journey-map/          what citizens do, step by step, evidenced
│   ├── service-blueprint/    the journey plus the machinery underneath
│   ├── service-journey-mapping/ blueprints + journey maps as commentable HTML
│   ├── ecosystem-map/        actors, systems, and flows as a network
│   ├── experience-map/       the whole citizen goal, across services
│   ├── workshop-facilitation/ co-creation sessions that produce artefacts
│   ├── brief-to-prototypes/
│   ├── prototype-iteration/
│   ├── build-for-production/
│   └── show-the-thing/
└── references/               the canonical knowledge base
    ├── barbados-service-standards.md
    ├── govuk-design-principles.md
    ├── gds-way-phases.md
    └── house-style.md

New to bimstack?

Read MANUAL.md – the single onboarding guide for new GovTech colleagues, sibling MDAs, and vendor teams. About two hours to read and walk the worked example, after which you'll know which command to run, which agent to ask, and what good looks like at each phase.

Day-to-day usage

For the full phase-by-phase rhythm – setup, the weekly cadence, what to type at each phase, what comes out – see PLAYBOOK.md. It walks through an end-to-end build using the medical-licence renewal example.

Install

bimstack is a Claude Code plugin and a public reference repo. You can use either, both, or neither.

As a plugin – from GitHub

/plugin marketplace add abisola/bimstack
/plugin install bimstack@bimstack

As a plugin – from a local folder (for testing before you push)

/plugin marketplace add /Users/abisola/dev-env/claude/bimstack
/plugin install bimstack@bimstack

Confirm it worked

In any new Claude Code or Cowork session:

• Type /bimstack: and autocomplete should reveal all nine commands (Claude Code namespaces plugin commands by plugin name)
• Run /agents to confirm the five agents (service-designer, content-designer, delivery-manager, developer, cyber-engineer) are registered
• Skills are loaded and trigger automatically on the right phrases (no manual invocation needed)

The plugin leans on the GovTech Barbados skills (govtech-barbados-services, govtech-barbados-forms, govtech-barbados-presentations, govtech-barbados-qr-codes) and on the Anthropic design, service-design, and frontend-design plugins. Install those alongside bimstack for the full experience.

As a reference

You can also just read the files. The references/ folder is the canonical bimstack view of the Standards, the Principles, the GDS Way, and the house style. Print them. Pin them to a wall. Fork the repo. Adapt it for your service.

Which agent should I use?

Building or doing…	Use the…	Phase notes
User research, journey map, problem statement, ecosystem map	Service designer	Discovery and alpha mostly
Plain-language copy, error messages, page review, alpha.gov.bb prototype	Content & interaction designer	Alpha onwards
Weeknote, show-and-tell, standards assessment, phase gate	Delivery manager	Every phase
Tech choice, integration with Trident ID, production build, ADR	Developer	Alpha onwards (no production code in discovery)
Threat model, privacy notice, DPIA, pen test plan, incident runbook	Cyber engineer	Alpha onwards

If you're not sure, ask the delivery manager first – they'll route you.

Which slash command should I run?

You want to…	Run	Hands off to
Turn a brief into testable prototypes	/bimstack:build	content-designer + developer
Roll feedback into the next version	/bimstack:iterate	content-designer + developer
Take an iteration to production-ready	/bimstack:productionise	developer + cyber-engineer + content-designer
Publish what we did this week	/bimstack:weeknote	delivery-manager
Self-assess against the 13 Standards	/bimstack:assess	delivery-manager + every other agent
Scaffold a discovery phase	/bimstack:discover	service-designer
Plan a show-and-tell	/bimstack:show	delivery-manager
Review a piece of copy	/bimstack:plain-language	content-designer
Draft or refresh a threat model	/bimstack:threat-model	cyber-engineer

How bimstack relates to other things

• The Barbados Digital Service Standards are the contract bimstack delivers against. bimstack assumes you'll be assessed against them and bakes them into every agent's reasoning. The Standards are the source of truth; bimstack is one way of meeting them.
• The GovBB design system is the visual and interaction layer bimstack builds on. Agents fetch components from the published library and use govbb--prefixed classes. They don't reinvent the chrome.
• The GovTech Barbados skills (govtech-barbados-services, -forms, -presentations, -qr-codes) are what the bimstack agents call into when they need to produce alpha.gov.bb pages, slide decks, or QR codes in the house style. bimstack agents use those skills, they don't replace them.
• The Anthropic design and service-design plugins (design, service-design, frontend-design) are the deeper skill libraries. bimstack agents reach for them where they're the best tool for the job.
• gstack is the Garry Tan repo this format was inspired by. It's for startups; bimstack is for governments. They share a structure but not a worldview.

Working in the open

bimstack itself works the way the services it builds work.

• Public repo. Standard 9.
• Weeknotes for changes to the stack.
• Issues open. Contributions welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
• MIT licensed. Standard 9.

Status

bimstack v0.1. First public cut. Expect changes. File issues. The Standards drift, the design system drifts, the team learns – bimstack drifts with them.

If you ship something with bimstack, write us a weeknote about it.

Licence

MIT. Use it, fork it, ship better government services. Standard 9.