/gaia-brainstorming

What it does

/gaia-brainstorming runs a facilitated brainstorming session using creative techniques like Mind Mapping, SCAMPER, Six Thinking Hats, Reverse Brainstorming, and more. It follows a four-phase flow: Session Setup, Technique Selection, Technique Execution, and Idea Organization. Output is a ranked, categorized idea list.

When to use it

• You want a structured ideation session using a specific technique (Mind Mapping, SCAMPER, Six Thinking Hats, Reverse Brainstorming, or others).
• You need a large volume of ideas (quantity over quality) organized, categorized, and ranked by feasibility.
• You want a standalone brainstorming session that is more technique-focused than /gaia-brainstorm (which is more discovery-oriented).

Prerequisites

• No strict prerequisites. Works best when planning artifacts exist for context.

Orchestration mode

When /gaia-brainstorming starts in subagent mode (Mode A -- the default), the framework emits a one-shot warning to your conversation. The warning text:

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
GAIA orchestration: running in subagent mode (Mode A)

The skill you're invoking belongs to a class (heavy-procedural or
conversational) whose output benefits from cross-step context. Mode A
dispatches each sub-agent in its own forked context, so context may
be lossy between steps — sub-agents return summaries, not full reasoning.

For the full-fidelity experience, enable Mode B (Agent Teams):
  1. Set CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1 in your environment.
  2. Add orchestration.mode: team to .gaia/config/project-config.yaml.

Mode B uses persistent teammates that preserve in-conversation state
across dispatches. See the orchestration contract for details.

This warning is shown once per session.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Why Mode B is better for this command

The /gaia-brainstorming skill declares orchestration_class: conversational in its SKILL.md frontmatter. Conversational skills produce output that benefits from cross-step context -- under Mode A every sub-agent dispatch runs in its own forked context and can only return a summary back to the orchestrator, losing the full reasoning trace of every prior step. Mode B uses persistent teammates that retain in-conversation state across dispatches, so each agent's contribution can build on what was said before instead of receiving only a summary.

How to enable Mode B

Both steps are required. If either is missing, the framework falls back silently to Mode A and the warning fires again on the next session.

Step 1 -- set the environment variable:

export CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1

Add this to your shell rc file to persist across sessions, or set it in Claude Code's settings.json.

Step 2 -- add the YAML block to .gaia/config/project-config.yaml:

orchestration:
  mode: team

One-shot semantics

The warning is emitted once per Claude Code session. A marker file at _memory/checkpoints/orchestration-warning-shown.<session-id> suppresses the warning for the rest of the session. Starting a new session re-emits the warning once.

How to invoke

/gaia-brainstorming New mobile app features

What it does step by step

1. Session setup Collects topic, scope, constraints, output format, and session tone.
2. Technique selection Recommends 2-3 techniques with rationale and lets you choose.
3. Technique execution Runs the selected technique round by round, generating 5-10 ideas per round. Quantity over quality.
4. Idea organization Categorizes, ranks, and evaluates all ideas. Writes to .gaia/artifacts/creative-artifacts/brainstorming-{date}.md.

Inputs

Outputs

Example session

> /gaia-brainstorming New mobile app features

Setup: Broad exploration, wild ideas welcome.

Recommended techniques:
  1. Mind Mapping -- broad topic exploration
  2. SCAMPER -- improve existing features
> 1

Round 1: 8 ideas generated.
Round 2: 6 ideas generated.

14 ideas categorized and ranked.
Written to .gaia/artifacts/creative-artifacts/brainstorming-2026-05-07.md

What to run next

• Feed the top-ranked ideas into /gaia-product-brief or /gaia-design-thinking.
• Run /gaia-adversarial on the top ideas to stress-test them before committing.

Troubleshooting

Topic not provided

The command asks for your topic interactively if no argument is given.

I keep seeing the GAIA orchestration warning every time I start this command

The warning is shown once per session, so if it fires again that's a new session -- not a per-skill repeat. If you want to silence it entirely, enable Mode B (full-fidelity orchestration via Agent Teams). Both of these conditions must be true:

• echo $CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS returns 1 (not empty)
• .gaia/config/project-config.yaml contains:

  orchestration:
    mode: team

If either is missing the framework silently uses Mode A and re-emits the warning each session.

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