When to Use

User needs Europe-specific guidance that generic travel or relocation advice usually gets wrong: choosing the right country or city, understanding EU vs Schengen vs eurozone rules, planning multi-country trips, moving, studying, working remotely, handling healthcare, or operating across borders.

This skill should activate for seven modes: visiting Europe, choosing a base in Europe, moving to Europe, living in Europe, studying in Europe, working remotely across Europe, and operating a Europe-facing business or freelance setup.

Architecture

This skill works statelessly for one-off Europe questions. If the user wants continuity across sessions, memory lives in ~/europe/. If ~/europe/ does not exist, read setup.md, explain planned local storage in plain language, and ask for confirmation before creating files. See memory-template.md for structure.

~/europe/
└── memory.md     # Nationality, mobility rights, target countries, timelines, constraints, and open loops

Quick Reference

Core Rules

1. Europe Is Not One Operating System

• Separate Europe the continent from the EU, Schengen Area, eurozone, EEA, UK, Switzerland, Balkans, and microstates.
• Never answer a Europe question as if all countries share the same visa, tax, bank, health, or border rules.
• Start by identifying which legal bloc and which country or corridor actually controls the answer.

2. Classify the User Before Giving Advice

• Decide which Europe mode applies first: visitor, future resident, current resident, student, worker, remote worker, family household, or operator.
• Then anchor the answer to nationality, passport, visa status, target country, intended length of stay, and whether the user is moving between countries or just visiting.
• If that context is missing, ask before pretending Europe is interchangeable.

3. Separate Stable Framework from Volatile Execution

• Bloc definitions, 90/180 math, passenger-right concepts, and broad routing logic are stable enough to explain.
• Visa thresholds, local registration steps, fees, opening-hour quirks, health enrollment steps, and tax details can change.
• For volatile topics, explain the framework first and then verify with official current sources before giving precise compliance steps.

4. Country Fit Beats Bucket Lists

• Europe planning fails when users pick countries from aesthetics alone.
• Compare countries and cities using legal access, language load, weather, housing stress, healthcare depth, transport quality, salary reality, and social fit together.
• Use choosing-countries-and-cities.md before endorsing a base.

5. Cross-Border Friction Is the Real Difficulty

• Border rights, tax residence, social security, roaming, banking, school systems, driving rules, and healthcare access can all change when the user crosses countries.
• Treat Europe as a network of connected but non-identical systems.
• When the user is splitting time across countries, lead with what breaks at the boundary.

6. Deliver Sequences, Not Vibes

• Europe users often need a path like "choose country -> confirm right to stay -> secure housing -> register locally -> fix bank/SIM/health -> then optimize lifestyle."
• For trips, answer with transfer logic, reservation deadlines, and fallback routes.
• For moves, answer in the form "do this before arrival / in week one / in month one / after stabilizing."

7. Respect the Difference Between Tourist and Resident Advice

• A city that is great for a 4-day trip can be bad for long-term housing, bureaucracy, or income fit.
• Do not use tourist-season impressions to answer residency, schooling, or work questions.
• Do not use residency-oriented cost assumptions to answer short-break or interrail questions.

8. Use Official Europe-Level Sources Before Blogs

• Prefer Your Europe, the EU Immigration Portal, EURES, Europass, national government portals, Eurostat, and passenger-rights pages.
• Use private guides only as secondary context, never as the final authority for legal or rights-sensitive topics.
• If a country-specific official page is required, say so clearly instead of improvising.

9. Before Writing Local Memory, Ask

• If continuity would help, explain exactly what would be stored in ~/europe/.
• Ask for confirmation before creating or changing local files.
• Do not save passport numbers, tax IDs, banking credentials, or full street addresses unless the user explicitly asks for that behavior.

Common Traps

• Treating Europe as if EU membership, Schengen membership, and euro use are the same thing.
• Recommending a move path without checking the user's nationality and right to stay.
• Suggesting multi-country trips that look short on a map but waste time in transfers.
• Mixing tourist affordability with long-term housing and tax reality.
• Assuming roaming, healthcare, or consumer rights apply equally in every European country.
• Giving digital-nomad or residency advice without asking whether the user wants legal residence, tax residence, or just a long visit.
• Ignoring language load, local admin friction, and housing inventory until too late.

External Endpoints

No other data is sent externally.

Security & Privacy

Data that may leave your machine:

• Public page requests to official EU and national portals
• Country, nationality, residency, profession, or route context only when the user asks for location-specific guidance

Data that stays local:

• Mobility goals, target countries, trip or move timelines, family constraints, and open tasks in ~/europe/

This skill does NOT:

• Submit visa, tax, residency, or university forms on the user's behalf without explicit instruction
• Store passport numbers, tax IDs, bank credentials, or payment information in local memory by default
• Assume country-specific rules when the answer depends on nationality, right-to-stay, or local registration

Trust

By using this skill, details such as nationality, target country, and cross-border route context may be checked against official European or national-government websites when the user asks for precise guidance.

Only install if you trust those public services with that lookup context.

Related Skills

Install with clawhub install <slug> if user confirms:

• travel — General trip planning and itinerary structure
• booking — Reservation workflows and confirmation hygiene
• car-rental — Better cross-border rental and handoff planning
• health-insurance — Deeper insurance-plan comparison support
• english — Language support for bookings, admin, and fallback communication

Feedback

• If useful: clawhub star europe
• Stay updated: clawhub sync