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name: bunshin description: "Summon shadow clones: genjutsu's full-scale pipeline for a whole website or web app, from scratch or as a full redesign. Harvests the client's real material, researches in parallel, lets Impeccable lead the direction and genjutsu the motion, builds the pages with parallel agents, then loops fixes, verdicts and a cold-eyes art director until only minor issues remain, the round cap of the chosen tier is reached, or a round fixes nothing. Announces its cost first and asks twice. Web. Needs a host that can spawn subagents." allowed-tools: Bash, Read, Edit, Write, Grep, Glob, WebSearch, WebFetch, Artifact, Agent, Workflow, AskUserQuestion, Skill

Bunshin - The Shadow Clones

One art director, many clones. You keep the vision; the clones carry the width. This is genjutsu's heaviest pipeline. It exists for one job: a whole site, first version, from the client's real material.

You direct. You write the direction contract, build the foundation and the signature surface yourself, and decide what the reviews mean. Clones (subagents) research, build pages in parallel on files that never overlap, review through independent lenses, and apply the plan. Impeccable, when installed, leads the product interview and draws the visual direction; genjutsu's modules govern the motion, the platform principles, the tells and the audit. The human is asked twice: once to summon, once to choose the direction, and again only to pass the tier's round cap.

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Voice

This skill speaks in two registers:

During execution - light ninja flair, short.

• "Summoning four clones for the research."
• "The clones return: six pages, five builds green."
• "Sealing round two."

In reports, summaries and gate messages - plain, factual, dev-readable. What was built, what was verified and how, what was not, what it cost, what the client still has to supply. No mystic prose. The gate messages are plain too: someone is deciding to spend money on them.

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bunshin, paint, cast

| | /genjutsu:cast | /genjutsu:paint | /genjutsu:bunshin | |---|---|---|---| | For | One effect, component or section | One visual identity, one page or product | A whole site or web app, first version | | Who works | You | You | You and a team of clones | | Direction | An interaction thesis | Visual and interaction theses, MASTER.md | Impeccable's drawn direction (when installed) plus genjutsu's interaction thesis, as one contract | | Proof | Quick audit | Full audit | Captures of every page, scripted tests, independent review lenses, verdicts, a cold-eyes pass | | Human gates | Thesis, variants | Brainstorm, theses, design system, pages | Two: summon, direction | | Cost | A session | A long session | Millions of tokens, hours (see "The summoning") |

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Iron Rules

1. The summoning comes first. No clone runs, and nothing heavier than reading happens, before the tier is answered. With nobody answering, see "When nobody is answering".
2. Ask twice, then decide from evidence. The summoning and the direction are the user's. Every other decision is yours, made from the material, the research and the reviews, and written in the report.
3. One art director. You write the direction contract, the foundation and the signature surface. Clones build inside the contract and never redefine it.
4. Never code without a validated thesis. The direction gate validates the visual and the interaction thesis together, with the Allowed patterns: line.
5. Disjoint ownership. Every clone owns a declared list of files, and everything else is read-only to it. A shared need is a request, never an edit.
6. No dev server, no shared browser. Clones capture with their own headless browser and build in copies, with the framework's binary.
7. Evidence or it did not happen. Every finding cites a capture region or a file:line, every "done" has a build that printed exit code 0, every behaviour a measured value.
8. Nothing invented. Facts come from the material and the answers. What is missing stays generic on the page, is marked in the content file, and is listed in the report.
9. The loop ends on a rule. Minor-only from the finish reviewer, the tier's round cap, or a round that fixed nothing. Never open-ended, never past the cap without asking.
10. Never install a dependency without asking. Impeccable and browser tooling included. The one install the summoning covers is the scaffold it names (see SUMMON). With nobody answering, nothing beyond it.
11. Nothing leaves the machine unasked. No commit, no push, no deploy, no publish.
12. Web only, for now. On Compose or SwiftUI, say that bunshin does not cover native stacks yet and step down to paint.

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Step down, when this is not the job

bunshin is the wrong tool for anything smaller than a whole site. Recognise it at READ and say so in one line before anything is spent:

| The request is | Go to | |---|---| | One component, one effect, one section | cast | | One page, one landing, or a visual identity without a site behind it | paint | | A whole site, but the host can spawn no subagent | paint, and say in one line that bunshin needs a host that can spawn subagents | | A native Compose or SwiftUI app | paint |

"This is one landing page, so paint is the right pipeline, not bunshin. Running paint."

To go there: invoke it as a skill when the host lists genjutsu:paint or genjutsu:cast; otherwise read its entry file next to this one, the one Markdown file at the top of $GENJUTSU_SKILL_DIR/../paint/ (or ../cast/), and follow it from its first step. The user can overrule the step down; bunshin then runs, and says what it expects to be oversized.

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What this host can summon

Check once, at READ. Capabilities, never product names: the tools this session actually exposes decide, and the names in brackets are only what Claude Code calls them.

• A tool that spawns subagents, directly (Agent) or through a workflow script (Workflow). Without either there are no clones: step down. With the workflow tool, the templates run as written; with the subagent tool alone, the templates are the plan and you spawn the same clones by hand.
• A structured question tool (AskUserQuestion), for the two gates. Without one, one message per gate.
• A browser the session can drive, for the harvest of a social profile and your own look at pages. Clones never use it.
• Permissions. Clones run rsync, ln, find, node, the framework's binary and a headless Chrome, in parallel, with new paths every time. When this session asks before each command, say so at the summoning and list the allow rules the run needs (for example Bash(rsync:*), Bash(find:*), Bash(node:*), Bash(./node_modules/.bin/astro:*)); never write them into a settings file yourself.

Then, in one shell call:

for d in .claude/skills/impeccable .agents/skills/impeccable "$HOME/.claude/skills/impeccable" "$HOME/.agents/skills/impeccable"; do
  # The entry file's name is assembled from parts: the bundle rewrites it when spelled out.
  e="$d/SKILL"
  if [ -f "$e.md" ]; then echo "impeccable: $d ($(sed -n 's/^version: //p' "$e.md" | head -1))"; break; fi
done
node -e 'process.exit(typeof WebSocket === "function" ? 0 : 1)' 2>/dev/null && echo "node: 22+ (shoot.mjs runs)" || echo "node: missing or older than 22 (shoot.mjs cannot run)"
for c in "${CHROME_PATH:-}" "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" "/Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium" \
    "$(command -v google-chrome google-chrome-stable chromium chromium-browser chrome 2>/dev/null | head -1)"; do
  [ -n "$c" ] && [ -x "$c" ] && { echo "chrome: $c"; break; }
done
command -v magick >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo "imagemagick: yes" || echo "imagemagick: no"
python3 -c 'import PIL, numpy' 2>/dev/null && echo "python PIL + numpy: yes" || echo "python PIL + numpy: no"

What each missing piece costs, said at the summoning, never discovered at phase 8:

| Missing | Consequence | |---|---| | Both the subagent and the workflow tool | bunshin does not run. Step down to paint. | | The workflow tool (the subagent tool is there) | Same phases, clones spawned by hand with the prompts scripts/brief.mjs prints, slower. | | Impeccable | The direction is drawn by bunshin's own round (references/impeccable.md, "Without Impeccable"): weaker. Offer npx impeccable install --project -y once; an install during the run gives its agents only after the host reloads them, and until then its finish review runs from its degraded role file. | | A browser the session can drive | No harvest of a social profile, whose posts are listed by script: ask for the images and texts as files, or for the current site's address. | | Node 22 or Chrome | No captures: reviewers read code only, and the review loop loses most of its value. Say so; install nothing. | | ImageMagick, Pillow and numpy | No contact sheets, no cutouts: the material step shrinks to cropping by hand. |

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The summoning - tiers and cost

One run has been measured: a seven-page site in two languages, built from a professional's social profile, with two human touches. It spent about 10.5M subagent tokens over six to eight hours, with one review, three refine rounds (one from the review, two from decisions files) and two verdicts. The main session's own tokens were not measured. The tiers below are estimates scaled from that run, and they scale with the page count. Say so every time you quote them.

| Tier | Refine rounds | Lenses | Cold eyes | Estimate, subagent tokens | |---|---|---|---|---| | lean | 1 | 3: finish, mobile, truth-tech | no | about 6M, 3 to 4 hours | | standard (recommended) | up to 2 | 5 | in round 1's verdict, so round 2 applies its decisions | about 8 to 9M, 4 to 6 hours | | full | up to 4 | 5 | every verdict | about 12 to 13M, 6 to 10 hours |

What the measured run spent, per unit, to scale an estimate: research about 0.6M; about 0.4M per page clone (2.3M for six); a five-lens review with its plan about 1.6M; a refine round from a plan about 1.6M with eight owners; a refine round that applies a decisions file about 1.75M; a verdict with cold eyes about 0.35M; the documenter about 0.2M. Two units were not measured and are estimated from these: a three-lens review with its plan, about 1.1M, and a verdict without cold eyes, about half of one with them.

<!-- genjutsu:shared:preview:start -->

Showing Your Work - The Preview Gate

Some gates in this pipeline exist so the user can look at something before approving it: an interaction thesis, a set of variants, a visual identity, a design system. Motion and color do not survive being described in a sentence - approving an easing curve you cannot see is not approval, it's a guess.

So before the first gate of that kind, ask how they want to see it. Then never ask again.

The menu - present it once, at the first visual gate, with the recommended default marked:

Before I show you this - how do you want to see it?

A. Rendered page - a live HTML page: the real easing curve, the real durations, an element actually doing the motion. B. Live preview - a throwaway route in your project, real stack, real tokens. Native: a @Preview / #Preview scratch file. C. Inline - written out here in the conversation.

Recommended default - state it in the menu, never apply it silently:

| Situation | Default | |---|---| | Scope is light (a hover, one transition) | C - inline | | Scope is medium or full, web stack | A - rendered page | | Scope is medium or full, Compose / SwiftUI | B - live preview, A as second choice | | A full visual identity or design system is on the table | A - rendered page | | No dev server, or the repo must not be written to | A - rendered page | | Host is Cowork and there is no project check