Motion Archaeologist

motion-archaeologist

Motion architecture analyst. Reverse-engineer how any website's animation is built — transport, timing, easing, orchestration — and lift the keyframe / shape / asset data to disk.

A Claude Code plugin from EnactSkill.

What it does

You paste a URL. The plugin:

1. Fetches the index HTML (via Firecrawl, with curl fallback)
2. Parses the loader graph (Vite __vite__mapDeps, webpack manifest, raw <script> tags)
3. Downloads the asset tree to a local workspace, preserving the original hashed filenames so the deployment works locally
4. Identifies the animation framework (Lottie, GSAP, Framer Motion, Web Animations API, Anime.js, Three.js, CSS keyframes, or custom procedural)
5. Extracts the animation data per engine type — Lottie JSON, GSAP tween catalogs, CSS keyframes, or an escape-hatch report for procedural rigs
6. Replicates the site at localhost:<port> so you can verify motion parity in your browser
7. Writes a report fusing technique prose with lifted assets

The hard constraint: every report includes both technique prose AND lifted assets. Technique-without-asset is a failed run.

Install

/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/pauldabrowski85/enact-plugins.git
/plugin install motion-archaeologist@enact-plugins

Setup:

1. Get a Firecrawl API key at firecrawl.dev.
2. Export it: export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-xxxx
3. Restart Claude Code so the bundled Firecrawl MCP can reach the key.

The Firecrawl branding format consumes 1 credit per scrape; the rest are free / curl.

Use

The skill auto-invokes whenever you ask about how a site's animation is built:

"How does stripe.com's hero animate?"

"What's the motion stack on linear.app?"

"Tear down lovefrom.com — I want to see how the bear is built."

The plugin handles the rest. Output lands in ./teardown-<host>/ with out/REPORT.md as the entry point.

What it refuses

• Sites that block both Firecrawl and curl (Cloudflare challenges, etc.). The plugin reports the block and asks for a real-browser session.
• Procedural engines with no extractable keyframed data. The plugin documents the engine and explicitly refuses to fabricate Lottie that doesn't exist.
• Asset extraction from authenticated surfaces. The plugin only fetches what's public.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.

Author

EnactSkill LLC. Source: github.com/pauldabrowski85/enact-plugins.