/gaia-init

/gaia-init is automatically run during npx create-gaia. It renames the project to your title, configures language support, replaces template branding, registers Claude tools and plugins, sets up the wiki, and hands you a project that compiles, lints, and tests cleanly.

The flow

1. pnpm + dependencies

1. Enables pnpm via Corepack if available, otherwise installs it globally with npm.
2. Runs pnpm install against the freshly extracted scaffold.
3. Runs /update-deps to update every dependency to its latest compatible version. If a package is held back, the reason is surfaced.

If install fails, the run halts with the underlying error. Address the cause and re-run /gaia-init.

2. Project questions

Three sets of prompts.

Project title. Name of your project (default: GAIA React App).

Languages. Pick the primary UI language, and any additional locales. If the project is single-language, you also choose whether to keep the i18n scaffolding or not. Stripping i18n now is cheaper than removing it later, but adding it back later is harder than leaving it in place.

Statusline mode. global writes the statusline command to ~/.claude/settings.json, project writes to .claude/settings.json only, skip leaves your settings alone.

3. Locale scaffolding

If multiple locales were chosen, it wires up non-en locale(s).

If the project is single-language with i18n stripped, /gaia-init follows .claude/instructions/remove-i18n.md to remove the framework cleanly.

4. Claude tooling

/gaia-init configures three external tools and three Claude plugins. You don’t need to call these manually. They’re listed here for your reference.

Tools. Per-machine, not tracked in the repo:

• React Doctor: curl -fsSL https://react.doctor/install-skill.sh | bash. Installs the react-doctor skill to ~/.claude/skills/. Auto-runs after code edits in a CLAUDECODE environment and is invoked by the code-review-audit agent pre-merge.

• Playwright CLI binary: npm install -g @playwright/cli@latest. Backs the bundled playwright-cli skill, which shells out to this binary.

• Serena MCP server, registered globally for your Claude Code:

  claude mcp add serena -s user -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/oraios/serena@v1.2.0 serena start-mcp-server --open-web-dashboard false

  Serena needs uv (Astral’s Python toolchain runner). If uv is missing, /gaia-init installs it first via curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh.

Plugins.

claude plugin install typescript-lsp@claude-plugins-official
claude plugin marketplace add AgriciDaniel/claude-obsidian
claude plugin install claude-obsidian@claude-obsidian-marketplace

5. Mentorship opt-in

You can choose to opt-in to GAIA’s experimental mentorship feature.

6. Wiki initialization

GAIA comes with an Obsidian wiki built-in. Read more about it here.

After gaia-init completes

You should see: <Project Title> is ready for development. Restart Claude to pick up the new plugin and skill state.

Restart Claude Code and you’re ready to start developing with GAIA.

Run pnpm dev to run the app locally. You can ask Claude to run it for you, or run it yourself in a separate terminal.

Resuming after a failure

/gaia-init is idempotent. If something breaks mid-run, ask Claude to fix any issues and resume gaia-init. Already-completed steps are skipped.