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Design@donghyeok99Staff

Swarm Rebuild: a cursor swarm redraws any web page

A reel of a cursor swarm wiping a web page and building it back has passed 20,000 plays on Instagram

Press Alt+Shift+S and the page goes blank; colored cursors drag out boxes, type the heading and duplicate the cards until the page is back.
Press Alt+Shift+S and the page goes blank; colored cursors drag out boxes, type the heading and duplicate the cards until the page is back.
Who
Made by Dhvanil (@DhvanilPatel) as a tribute to Joel Califa’s Swarm site; the README credits the motion design to Califa.
When
The repository opened on 14 October 2026; v1.1.0 with sound and live video rebuilds came the next day. No release tags.
Where
A Chrome extension, not on the Web Store yet, loaded unpacked in developer mode. Its listing says nothing is collected or sent.

What was hard

Putting a page-being-built moment into a short video about your site meant animating it separately, one element at a time. The page you already had couldn’t simply be used as it was.

What it does about it

Swarm Rebuild takes the page that is open right now as its material. It turns the DOM at click time into a blueprint of boxes, text, lines, guides and duplicates, wipes the page, and lets the cursors redraw it from that blueprint the way a design tool would. Scroll and the swarm follows, with more cursors the faster you go.

The README’s 36-second demo: the page goes blank and the swarm builds it back

What people made with it

instagram.com@artarmdhn2026-11-02

An 82-second reel of a web page being rebuilt by the cursor swarm. The caption, in Indonesian, says to let the agent do the work; the comments link the repo and ask how to use it.

biarin agent yang ngerjain 😴
likes 702 · comments 31 (2026-11-04 as of)instagram.com ↗
GitHubAhmedaldoais722026-11-02

They ran it locally on their cybersecurity portfolio and asked permission, with credit, to add it as an optional "Watch it rebuild" button that runs only when a visitor clicks.

I ran it locally on my cybersecurity portfolio and loved the result.

How it runs inside

  1. 1

    You → background.js

    Toolbar icon or Alt+Shift+SThe service worker checks if the swarm already runs here (then it stops) and if video, canvas or iframes are on screen.swarm-rebuild/background.js
  2. 2

    background.js → swarm.js

    Media-only screenshot, then swarm.js injectedWebGL canvases, playing video and cross-origin iframes aren’t in the DOM, so it shows only those and screenshots them.swarm-rebuild/background.js
  3. 3

    swarm.js → Blueprint

    Live DOM into a blueprintShadow roots included: boxes become rects, text text layers, single borders lines, repeats a master and copies.swarm-rebuild/swarm.js
  4. 4

    Blueprint → swarm.js

    Tasks unlocking top downA layer in the page’s background covers it; each cursor takes a task. Children wait for parents, copies for masters.swarm-rebuild/swarm.js
  5. 5

    swarm.js → Web Audio API

    One note each time a piece landsTyping clicks like a keyboard; boxes and images play a glass-piano note in E major pentatonic. No audio files.swarm-rebuild/swarm.js
  6. 6

    swarm.js → The rebuilt page

    Go live: back to the clickable pageWhen it’s done the cursors flock to your mouse; Go live fades back to the real page, and Replay builds it again.swarm-rebuild/swarm.js

What goes in, what comes out

A box with fill, border, shadow or gradientDragged out with a crosshair and a W × H badge, then filled in
Headings and paragraphsA text box dragged out and typed with a caret; big headings start at 18px and grow
Repeated nav links, cards, list rowsOne master ⌥-dragged into copies with red spacing marks, then retyped
Single-side borders and <hr>Lines drawn with the pen tool, anchor by anchor

Is it for you

Good for

  • Adding a page-being-built moment to a video about your site
  • Screen recordings with Tour auto-scrolling at the swarm’s pace
  • A clip with its own sound for Reels or Shorts

Not for

  • No license yet. Using the extension is fine, but the README asks you to check with its author and with Joel Califa before reusing the code.
  • Not an AI tool: the cursors run on a scripted animation engine and call no agent or model.
  • A visual rebuild, not a clone: animations freeze at click time, and canvases, videos and iframes below the first screen become placeholders.
  • It can’t run on chrome:// pages, the Web Store or the PDF viewer, and very long pages stop at about 4,000 layers / 40,000px.

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