Claude is raw power.
GAIA is order and focus.
GAIA: A serious harness for Claude Code
Keep the speed, lose the debt.
Specs before code. Gates on every commit. An audit on every merge. GAIA keeps the project, and Claude’s own memory, clean as it grows. Your AI engineer stays sharp, session after session.
Built by Steven Sacks, creator of the original GAIA framework, used on 100,000+ sites.
Skills advise.
GAIA enforces.
A skill is advice. The model can take it or leave it. GAIA leaves no such choice.
The rules that matter most don’t depend on the model remembering them. Test-driven development is required. Secrets can’t be written into source. Every commit clears typecheck, lint, tests, and build.
Every merge is audited for security holes and risky patterns. A change not proven small gets the full line-by-line review. Problems are fixed automatically where it’s safe, blocked for your review where they aren’t.
Without standards, Claude improvises. With GAIA’s standards, quality holds up.
GAIA ships with informed opinions on styling, tests, stories, accessibility, and services. Claude applies them to every file it touches, so the codebase stays consistent instead of a patchwork of whatever the model felt like that session.
Each rule is scoped to the files it matches, so Claude gets the right standard and none of the noise. Whatever you build on top inherits the same gates.
app/**/*.{tsx,css}tailwindapp/services/**api-serviceapp/components/**accessibilityapp/**/*.stories.tsxstorybook.playwright/**playwrightYour project grows.
Your context doesn’t.
A bigger codebase usually means a bigger context and a bigger bill. Every session re-reads more, and Claude’s own notes pile up until they slow it down.
GAIA keeps state on disk and reads only what each task needs, not the whole project. Upkeep commands keep Claude’s context lean, so it stays flat as your project grows.
wikiArchitecture, flows, and decisionsnotebookSpecs, plans, and research for work in flightrun stateWhere paused work picks upmemoryClaude’s own notes, between sessionscleansePrunes duplicate, conflicting, and stale notesfitnessHeals config rot before it degrades ClaudeDiscipline you can install.
You direct. Claude implements.
GAIA enforces.