刚 (gāng) marks the recent past, similar to 'just' in English. 我刚 + verb = 'I just (verb)-ed'. Often paired with 才 in 我刚才 (wǒ gāngcái, 'I just now') for a more emphatic 'a moment ago'.
usage
Not a fixed lexical word — it's a high-frequency subtitle-corpus collocation. Treat as the pattern '[subject] + 刚 + [verb]' rather than a compound.
