Vara Skills

A public library of AI-ready skills that turn coding agents into Vara dApp builders — from spec to deployed program.

Vara Skills is an open-source pack of agentic playbooks that gives AI coding agents — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and any tool that supports the universal skills format — exact, documentation-backed workflows for every step of Gear/Vara Sails development.

Each skill is a self-contained Markdown file the agent reads at runtime.

👉 Repository: github.com/gear-foundation/vara-skills

Building for Vara.eth instead?

See Agent Skills for the Vara.eth-focused pack covering ethexe, Mirror contracts, and Solidity integration.

What You Get

Documentation-backed workflows — every skill cites the exact Sails / Gear APIs, real imports, and verified patterns
Auto-routing — describe what you want and the ship-sails-app router picks the right sequence of skills
Tool-agnostic — the same skill files work across Claude Code, Codex, and any agent that reads a SKILL.md
Zero config — install once, the agent discovers the skills automatically
Open source — MIT-licensed, community contributions welcome

Installation

Claude Code

Install from the marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/gear-foundation/vara-skills
/plugin install vara-skills@vara-skills

For local development (after cloning the repo):

/plugin marketplace add .
/plugin install vara-skills@vara-skills

Use /reload-plugins after editing skill files locally.

Codex

Clone the repo and run the install script:

git clone https://github.com/gear-foundation/vara-skills.git
cd vara-skills
bash scripts/install-codex-skills.sh

Any Agent (Universal)

npx skills add gear-foundation/vara-skills

Skill Catalog

The pack is organized by phase. The router skill (ship-sails-app) chooses the right path for your task.

Planning

Skill	Purpose
`idea-to-spec`	Turn an idea into a structured specification
`gear-architecture-planner`	High-level Gear program architecture
`sails-architecture`	Service and state design in Sails
`task-decomposer`	Break a spec into actionable tasks

Build & Implementation

Skill	Purpose
`sails-dev-env`	Set up the Rust/Sails toolchain
`sails-new-app`	Scaffold a new Sails program
`sails-feature-workflow`	Add features to an existing program
`sails-rust-implementer`	Write Sails services in Rust
`sails-idl-client`	Generate typed clients from the IDL
`sails-frontend`	Build a frontend wired to the program
`sails-indexer`	Set up an indexer for on-chain events
`awesome-sails-vft`	Work with VFT (fungible token) standard
`sails-program-evolution`	Upgrade and evolve deployed programs
`vara-wallet`	Wallet integration patterns

Verification

Skill	Purpose
`sails-gtest`	Write unit/integration tests with `gtest`
`gtest-tdd-loop`	Test-driven development workflow
`sails-local-smoke`	Smoke-test against a local Gear node
`gear-message-execution`	Trace and debug message flow

Deep Capability & Maintenance

Skill	Purpose
`gear-gstd-api-map`	Map of low-level `gstd` APIs
`vara-skills-upgrade`	Keep your local skills up to date

Reference dApps

Real dApps built end-to-end with Vara Skills live in a companion repository:

👉 github.com/gear-foundation/Agentic-development-dapps

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