/gaia-creative-sprint

What it does

/gaia-creative-sprint runs a multi-agent creative pipeline in three sequential phases: Empathize (design thinking), Solve (problem solving), and Innovate (innovation strategy). Each phase delegates to a specialized agent, and the outputs are synthesized into a unified creative brief.

When to use it

• You want to combine human-centered design, problem-solving, and innovation strategy in a single intensive session.
• You have a complex challenge that benefits from three different perspectives: user empathy (Lyra), systematic problem-solving (Nova), and strategic innovation (Orion).
• You want a unified creative brief that synthesizes insights from all three phases.

Prerequisites

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

Orchestration mode

When /gaia-creative-sprint 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.

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

Why Mode B is better for this command

The /gaia-creative-sprint 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-creative-sprint Reduce food waste in restaurants

What it does step by step

1. Empathize Lyra (design-thinking-coach) runs empathy mapping and problem definition.
2. Solve Nova (problem-solver) applies systematic problem-solving to the defined problem.
3. Innovate Orion (innovation-strategist) identifies disruption opportunities and business model implications.
4. Synthesize Merges all three phase outputs into a unified creative brief at .gaia/artifacts/creative-artifacts/creative-sprint-{date}.md.

Inputs

Outputs

Example session

> /gaia-creative-sprint Reduce food waste in restaurants

Phase 1: Empathize (Lyra)...
Phase 2: Solve (Nova)...
Phase 3: Innovate (Orion)...

Synthesizing unified creative brief...
Written to .gaia/artifacts/creative-artifacts/creative-sprint-2026-05-07.md

What to run next

• /gaia-product-brief -- formalize the creative sprint outputs into a product brief for downstream planning.
• Review the unified creative brief and decide which ideas to carry forward into the product lifecycle.

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.

Related commands