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Boxes become live geometry
A crosshair drags out every box with a live W × H badge, then the real fill fades in. Fills, borders, radii, shadows, gradients, masks and backdrop blur all survive the trip.
Chrome extensionbuilt on the motion of Swarm
Wipe any page.Watch the swarm rebuild it.
One click turns any website into a blank canvas. A flock of multiplayer cursors draws the boxes, types the text, pulls the guides and brings the page back, live — the way a design team would in a design tool.
15 agents · 61 layers · no data leaves your browser
15 cursors live
Maya is dragging a box
Text snapped to baseline
15cursor agents
4,000layer ceiling
0network requests
1 clickto wipe a page
The whole trick
The page is gone. The rebuild is the show.
Swarm Rebuild is a Chrome extension that wipes any web page to a blank canvas and lets a swarm of multiplayer cursors build it back, live: crosshair-drawn boxes, typed text, pen-tool lines, ruler guides and alt-drag duplicates, until the page looks just like it did before.
Layer by layer
What the swarm rebuilds
The animation is not one screenshot fading back in. Every visible part is inspected, split into a task and performed by a cursor that knows how that kind of object is built.
TYPE
Text is typed back into place
Text layers are cloned with their computed styles — fonts, links, inline code, icons and pseudo-elements — then retyped with an I-beam and a blinking caret.
PEN
Lines are drawn, not faked
Single-side borders and horizontal rules become pen-tool lines: anchor points first, then a rubber-band path that snaps the stroke down exactly where it belongs.
MEDIA
Images and frames come back
Images, SVGs, video, canvas and iframes return as media layers. The real asset fades in from a grey placeholder, with images sweeping in from top to bottom.
ALT + DRAG
Repeated parts multiply
Repeated siblings are detected as one master plus duplicates. The swarm alt-drags a copy, measures the red gap, then retypes the text, swaps the image or restyles it.
GUIDE
Baselines snap together
Figma-style rulers slide in, red guides get pulled out, and text snaps onto shared left edges and baselines. The layout starts to feel measured again.
The choreography
How the rebuild happens
The extension captures the page once, gets out of the way, then runs a tiny generator script for each cursor. The order is the design.
Snapshot
The extension walks the live DOM, including open shadow roots, and turns it into a blueprint. Page structure becomes rects, text layers, pen lines, media and guides. Repeated siblings become one master plus duplicates.
Blank
A full-viewport layer, isolated from the page CSS in its own shadow root, covers the page with its own background color. A quick hidden scroll pass wakes lazy images and reveal-on-scroll content first.
Rebuild
Each cursor runs a small generator script per task. Children wait for their parent box, duplicates wait for their master, and the whole page unlocks from top to bottom as you scroll.
Go live
When the last layer lands, the cursors flock to your pointer. Go live fades back to the real, clickable page. Replay builds the whole thing again whenever you want to watch.
Scroll is the timeline
The swarm chases you.
Scroll and the rebuild follows. Move faster and more agents join. Tour auto-scrolls at the pace the swarm can keep up with for a clean screen recording. 1×, 2× and 3× change the build speed. Hide clears the toolbar completely; any move or key brings it back.
- Tour mode for hands-free screen recordings.
- Sound on by default, with one-key mute.
- Replay any page without refreshing it.
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Sound is onsynthesized live · no audio files
Mtypingclicksguidesglass piano
A clicky-clacky soundtrack
You can hear the page come together.
Typing is a mechanical keyboard. Every mouse press gets a press-and-release click. Guides snap with a crisp tick. Boxes, images and duplicates land as sparse glass-piano notes from an E major pentatonic, every sound panned to its cursor.
An airy swell covers the page dissolve. A short arpeggio fans the swarm out. A soft E-major chord closes the build. Press M any time to mute.
Built for real pages
Every page is a stress test.
This is a visual rebuild, not a clone. The charm is watching a design tool think in public. The limits are part of the honesty.
Chrome-only surfaces
Chrome does not let extensions run on chrome:// pages, the Web Store or the PDF viewer. The toolbar icon shows a red × there.
A visual rebuild
Animations freeze at the moment you click. Some decorative pseudo-elements are skipped when their position cannot be worked out.
Off-screen media
Canvases, videos and iframes below the first screen become placeholders, because Chrome only allows the screenshot on the visible tab.
No scripts run twice
Web components are rebuilt as plain styled elements. None of the page scripts execute inside the swarm layer.
Large pages are capped
Very long pages stop at roughly 4,000 layers or 40,000 pixels. The rebuild stays fast rather than trying to clone forever.
Optional access
Automatic play is off by default. If you enable it, Chrome asks for access to the sites you choose, and switching back gives that access up.
Private by default
Nothing leaves the tab.
The page snapshot and the one media screenshot live only in that tab's memory. The extension collects no data, sends none and loads no remote code. By default it only touches the tab you click, at the moment you click.
No analyticsNo uploadsNo remote code
Questions, answered
What people ask before letting the swarm loose
What does Swarm Rebuild do?+
Click the extension on any website and the page fades to nothing. A swarm of colorful multiplayer cursors gathers around the site logo, then rebuilds the page piece by piece in front of you.
Does Swarm Rebuild collect or send page data?+
No. The page is read in your browser, the snapshot lives in that tab and is discarded when you exit. The extension makes no network requests of its own. Sound is synthesized locally with the Web Audio API.
What can I watch the swarm rebuild?+
Boxes, text, borders, images, video, canvas, iframes, repeated cards, navigation rows and list items. The swarm also pulls ruler guides and snaps text to shared baselines as it goes.
Can I control the pace?+
Yes. Scroll and the swarm chases you, with more agents joining the faster you go. Tour auto-scrolls at a pace the swarm can keep up with, and 1× / 2× / 3× changes build speed.
Ready when you are
Let the swarm loose.
Open any page, click act and watch the blank canvas turn back into the site you were just reading. Then do it again somewhere else.
Plans from $9/mo, or $7/mo billed annually · Stripe checkoutThis project is a tribute to Swarm by Joel Califa. The cursor set, flocking physics, build choreography, rulers and overall look inherit his motion language. What this adds is the part that points it at any page: snapshotting a live DOM into a blueprint the swarm can rebuild.