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Skills

GAIA ships its skills under .claude/skills/ in your project. Each one is a directory with a SKILL.md and (sometimes) supporting references/ files that load on demand.

GAIA groups its skills into two categories:

Code skills govern how code is written and reviewed. Trigger when you write or edit TypeScript, React, Tailwind, tests, or browser automation. See Code skills.

Scaffolders generate new files from templates. Trigger when you ask to create a component, hook, route, or service. See Scaffolders.

There’s one more skill, gaia, that in practice acts as a command. See commands for more information.

Each SKILL.md has a description: field that lists the phrasings and situations that load the skill. The skills do not run on every prompt; they activate when the description matches what you said. You don’t invoke them by name. Saying “scaffold a card called PriceCard” loads new-component. Saying “the typecheck is angry about a stale closure” loads react-code.

A few skills are also wired to the statusline. When /update-deps or /update-gaia detect pending work, the statusline shows a Run /update-deps or Run /update-gaia indicator; clicking the indicator loads the skill.

Drop a new directory under .claude/skills/<name>/ with a SKILL.md whose frontmatter sets name, description, and (optionally) model: to pin a model tier. Claude picks it up on the next session.