Replicate Theme

Replicate Theme — Carry-and-Scope Parity Path

You are the carry-and-scope reconstruct orchestrator. /liberate dispatches you inline after it has captured the site; you rebuild it by carrying the source markup near-verbatim and scoping the source's own CSS, rather than projecting onto core blocks. The goal is maximum visual parity. You own only the reconstruct→theme stage — capture already happened in /liberate.

Read this first — what you are trading. This path emits each page region as a single core/html island. These pages are raw-HTML-editable, not block-editable. You are deliberately trading all block editability for fidelity. Do not "improve" the output by converting islands to blocks — that is the block path's (replicate-with-blocks) job, and the whole point here is to NOT do that.

Honesty bar. Per [[feedback_honest_visual_assessment]] and [[feedback_never_guess_always_look]]: when you report parity, render source and built at the same width, crop both, read both, and itemize the real differences bluntly BEFORE claiming any win. Never assert parity you have not looked at.

Entry contract — capture already happened

/liberate dispatches you after extraction with the resolved <outputDir> (from liberate_paths), which already holds the carry inputs. Assume they exist. If any required input is missing/incomplete, STOP and tell the operator to run /liberate <url> first — do NOT capture here (that's a /liberate capture gap to surface, not silently re-run).

The carry inputs you consume (all produced by /liberate's extraction):

• html/*.html — rendered source HTML per page (the carry source). Required. Posts are captured as post--<name>.html.
• screenshots/desktop/*.png + screenshots/mobile/*.png + screenshots/manifest.json — source truth for the parity compare. Required.
• output.wxr — the base WXR you patch into output-carry.wxr.
• redirect-map.json — [{from,to}] source-path → local-permalink map. Drives the internal-link rewrite (nav + body hrefs → local). Without it, links pass through to the source domain.
• media/ + media-stubs.json — downloaded assets and their CDN-URL→filename records. The reconstruct installs these into the site and rewrites carried <img>/url() to the local WP library.
• sections/*.json — optional (the splitter keys off the DOM, not specs), but read if present.

MCP tool you call

The tool reuses the SAME helpers as the block replicate-with-blocks path — buildPageLinkMap (src/lib/replicate/page-link-map.ts) and installRunMediaMap (src/lib/replicate/run-media-map.ts). Don't reimplement link/media logic in the orchestrator.

You also reuse the shared install/import/compare tools: liberate_preview (provision Studio site), liberate_import (WXR import), liberate_compare (source-vs-rendered pixel diff). Read their schemas in src/mcp-server.ts before calling.

Theme slug derives from outputDir. The resolved <outputDir> drives the theme slug: <host>-carry (the -carry suffix is on the THEME name only — the Studio site name is just <host>, see step 2). installMediaForUrl self-hosts the run's media directly. (Known gap: the slug should really derive from studioSitePath, not outputDir.)

The MCP server does NOT hot-reload. liberate_reconstruct_pages_carry is a new tool — if the server was started before it was added, restart the MCP server first or the tool will be missing. (See AGENTS.md.)

The flow

Committed scripts that drive this (all site-generic, all paths from argv):

The reconstruct tool can't run via the MCP server (long-lived, no hot-reload), so these driver scripts run the on-disk handler directly — always through scripts/run.mjs, which runs the source via tsx in a dev checkout and the committed self-contained bundle (dist/scripts/<name>.mjs) in a plugin install, where no node_modules exists. The page-list + WXR-patch logic is the tested lib src/lib/replicate/carry-page-list.ts (buildCarryPageList / buildOutputCarryWxr) — the single source of truth shared by the driver and its --list inspector.

1. Resolve the run and build the page list

The driver builds this internally via buildCarryPageList (in the tested lib src/lib/replicate/carry-page-list.ts) — you don't hand-assemble it; run … <outputDir> --list to inspect what will carry first. The join it performs, for reference: read screenshots/manifest.json (URL → files), cross-reference output.wxr(.full) for each page/post item's post_name (slug) + title, and produce pages: [{ slug, sourceUrl, title, isHome?, postType?, htmlSlug? }]:

• Pages: slug = WP post_name, postType: 'page', htmlSlug = slug. The front page is captured as homepage (matched by root-URL <link> OR post_name home/homepage).
• Posts: slug = bare WP post_name, postType: 'post', htmlSlug = the manifest slug (e.g. post--world-teacher-day). The WXR post <link> drops /post/ but the manifest URL keeps it; join by exact post--<post_name>.html then prefix-match (%-encoded / truncated slugs).
• Pages with no captured html/<htmlSlug>.html are skipped + logged.

1a. Scope: full carry vs hybrid (blog-dominant sites)

buildCarryPageList covers every captured page AND post — correct for small sites. But on a blog/news-dominant source (hundreds of posts), carrying every post is the wrong trade: the carry path emits one scoped-CSS sheet per carried page, so N-hundred posts bloat the theme to tens of MB of near-duplicate blog-template CSS (see "CSS weight" below), and a pixel-carried article gains nothing over native rendering. Posts are text + images — they belong in a normal blog template fed by the WXR content already extracted.

Hybrid (default for content-heavy sites): carry only the custom/marketing pages (homepage + service/about/landing — the bespoke designs); let posts, the blog index/archives, events, and tag/category pages stay native (imported from the WXR at provision, rendered by the theme's block templates). Scope the carry set with EXCLUDE= on carry-reconstruct-drive.ts (drop /news, /blog, /the-dose, post archives, …) — run --list first to confirm what carries. The capture must cover the carried pages in FULL (a representative-only sample can't carry — /liberate Step 5 makes capture scope depend on this choice); surface the gap, don't silently skip.

Native-side jobs when going hybrid:

1. Working blog templates — now automatic. When no POST is carried, buildCarryThemeFiles auto-emits clean native single.html (post-title + date + featured image + content + prev/next), home.html, and archive.html (a core/query inherit loop) — built from the home page's chrome scaffold with NO dual-viewport wrapper, so they render clean-and-native (NOT pixel-matched to the source feed). index.html stays the homepage fallback; set page_for_posts to the blog page so /blog resolves to home.html. Override with nativeBlog on CarryThemeInput if needed. (Carried-post runs keep the carried-island single.html instead.)
2. Native-post media localization. The carry tool rewrites carried-island <img>/url() to the local library, but native post bodies keep their source-CDN URLs — the images ARE downloaded + installed by step 3's media install, only the content references aren't rewritten. After step 3, run node scripts/run.mjs localize-native-post-media <outputDir> <studioSitePath> to rewrite native post_content to the local copies (source→local map from media-stubs.json's recorded localUrls). [[feedback_never_lose_source_content]]

2. Provision the Studio site

• Slim first: node scripts/run.mjs carry-reconstruct-drive <outputDir> --slim. A media-heavy WXR (hundreds of attachments) trips Studio's ~120s blueprint-import silence timeout (surfaces as Error establishing a database connection; the half-created site is removed) — see [[project_studio_import_heartbeat]]. The --slim mode (lib slimWxrForProvision) slims output.wxr IN PLACE (drops every attachment <item>, flips draft→publish) and backs the full WXR up to output.wxr.full. The reconstruct installs media separately (step 3), so the provisioned site loses nothing — and step 3's driver restores output.wxr from .full at the end, so the slim is transient and the dir is never left lossy (a later blocks run / liberate_verify still sees the full WXR).
• Provision via liberate_preview({ outputDir }) — it reads the now-slimmed output.wxr. The site is named <site> (e.g. ~/Studio/<site>, no path suffix); if a blocks-path site already exists with that name, studio.ts uniques it (<site>-2, …), so both paths on one extraction yield distinct sites without clobbering. liberate_preview returns path (the resolved Studio WP root) — pass it straight through as studioSitePath in step 3 (no need to re-derive ~/Studio/<site>).

3. Run the carry reconstruct (steps 1 + 3 + 4, one command)

• node scripts/run.mjs carry-reconstruct-drive <outputDir> <studioSitePath> "<Site> (Carry)" — use liberate_preview's returned path as <studioSitePath>. This runs reconstructPagesCarryHandler on the on-disk source (the MCP server can't — it doesn't hot-reload) and, in one pass: builds the page list (step 1), installs the run's media + self-hosts it (installMediaForUrl — one site, one stub store, no cross-site stamping), rewrites links + img/url to local, writes the theme, writes the islands + _swap.php, writes output-carry.wxr (step 4), and restores output.wxr from .full. The theme slug derives from outputDir → <host>-carry (theme name only — distinct from the un-suffixed site name). The driver prints THEMESLUG=…, the mediaInstalled/mediaErrors/fetchErrors counts, the missingMediaDownloaded/fontsLocalized self-host steps, and the self-host audit: residualCdnAssets=N assertion (0 = no external asset deps survived).
• Verify the fixes landed, don't assume: confirm residualCdnAssets=0 (anything else lists the offending hosts/samples); the homepage island should have local /…/ nav hrefs (not https://<source>/…) and …/wp-content/uploads/… img srcs (not the CDN); a post island should have is_single('<slug>') in functions.php; spot-check a few rewritten image/font URLs return HTTP 200.

4. output-carry.wxr (handled by the step-3 driver)

The step-3 driver already writes this (buildOutputCarryWxr): it copies the FULL output.wxr.full (with attachments — this is the import deliverable, NOT the slimmed provision WXR) and, for each island, REPLACES that item's <content:encoded> body with the island (matching page AND post items by <wp:post_name> == slug), preserving everything else (titles, dates, IDs, menus, media items) verbatim ([[feedback_never_lose_source_content]]). The island is CDATA-wrapped (any ]]> escaped as ]]]]><![CDATA[>) via a per-item function replacer — not a greedy regex, not a string replacement (avoids the $&/$1 footgun, see [[project_capture_document_nesting_bug]]). The driver prints items/patched/cdataBalanced; confirm the item count round-trips and xmllint --noout <outputDir>/output-carry.wxr passes.

5. Swap content into the live site + activate

• Do NOT re-import output-carry.wxr to update content — the WXR importer skips items whose GUID already exists, so it won't overwrite content already in the site. Instead swap directly. The step-3 driver already wrote the islands + a _swap.php into <studioSitePath>/wp-content/uploads/_carry-islands/; run it: studio wp --path <studioSitePath> --user=admin eval-file /wordpress/wp-content/uploads/_carry-islands/_swap.php (VFS path — Studio mounts the site at /wordpress; --user=admin gives unfiltered_html so KSES doesn't strip carried markup). It finds each post by post_name across ['page','post'] and wp_update_posts its post_content, publishing it.
• Activate the carry theme (studio wp --path <studioSitePath> theme activate <themeSlug>). Set the static front page (option update show_on_front page + option update page_on_front <homepage id>) and rewrite flush.

5a. Enrich product marketing (stores only)

• If the run has products, run node scripts/run.mjs enrich-product-marketing <outputDir> <studioSitePath> AFTER products are imported + media is installed. It rebuilds the CDN→local media map from the attachments' _dla_source_url meta (one query — covers already-installed media, which installRunMediaMap would miss), reconstructs each product's marketing sections into core blocks (joining section-image URLs to the library by basename so the structured renderers emit them instead of falling back to islands), writes them to each product's post_content (joined by SKU) and the short blurb to the excerpt, in one bulk DB pass. It prints a per-product N core blocks, M html islands line; expect mostly core blocks (islands only for sections too complex to reconstruct without losing content).
• Verify: load a product page — the buy box (gallery + title + price + add-to-cart) is functional Woo, and the rich marketing renders full-width below it (not a thin blurb). A product that comes out thin means its section specs weren't captured (re-capture) or its marketing is JS-rendered.

6. Render, screenshot, and compare — the parity verdict

• Screenshot the built site (desktop + mobile) for every page: node scripts/run.mjs carry-replica-shots <outputDir> <carryBaseUrl> <outputDir>/replica-carry. It navigates via redirect-map.json (posts move /post/<slug> → /<slug>/, which WP further 301s to its date permalink, so the bare source path would rely on WP's flaky canonical-redirect guessing), and keys the replica manifest by the SOURCE url so liberate_compare joins origin↔replica by pathname.
• Run liberate_compare({ originDir: "<outputDir>/screenshots", replicaDir: "<outputDir>/replica-carry" }) against the SOURCE screenshots. Emit <outputDir>/run-report-carry.json with a per-page and overall parity score, mirroring the block path's run-report.json shape. Include residualCdnAssets (from the step-3 driver's self-host audit; 0 = fully self-hosted) with any offending hosts/samples — this is a correctness deliverable, reported separately from the pixel score.
• Chrome-fidelity audit. After the carry build, run node scripts/run.mjs carry-chrome-audit-run <outputDir> <builtBaseUrl> <studioSitePath> — it renders the built site's header, footer, and nav, diffs them against the source chrome-fidelity.json captured during screenshots, and appends source-copied corrections (display, opacity, text-decoration, line-height, font-size, etc.) to the theme's site.css. It writes <outputDir>/chrome-audit.json and populates two run-report tallies: chromeCorrections (CSS properties auto-applied to close the gap — informational, self-healing) and droppedChrome (a source chrome element — nav link, footer item, logo — that didn't survive the carry at all). A non-zero droppedChrome triggers a warn verdict and should be investigated; chromeCorrections is reported but does not affect the verdict.
• Report the carry score directly NEXT TO the block path's score for the same pages. This is the deliverable — the evidence for whether carry-and-scope actually wins, and by how much.
• Then do the honest visual pass: for the 2–3 worst pages, crop source and built at the same width side by side, read both, and itemize the real differences. State plainly where the carry theme still falls short.

Self-hosting & structure — VERIFY, don't assume

An earlier version of this skill listed "media is self-hosted" as a settled fact you needn't re-check. That was both wrong (a Wix carry shipped ~half its gallery images, its whole font library, and dead preload <link>s still on the builder CDN) and a trap — telling the agent not to re-describe it as a gap suppressed the verify-before-claiming discipline ([[feedback_never_guess_always_look]]). So: never assert self-hosting from memory. The reconstruct ASSERTS it and you report the number. After all localization the handler runs findExternalAssetRefs (src/lib/replicate/carry-cdn-audit.ts) over the assembled islands + theme CSS/parts and returns residualCdnAssets (+ residualCdnByHost / residualCdnSamples); the driver prints self-host audit: residualCdnAssets=N. A clean run is 0 — put it in the run-report. Anything >0 is a leak to chase (it does not flip the verdict, but it is not "done"). The audit scans ASSET positions only (<img src>/srcset, CSS url()), so it never false-flags <iframe> embeds or editorial <a href> links.

Self-hosting seams — what closes each leak:

• Images. installRunMediaMap installs the run's media and rewrites carried <img src>/srcset to the local library. Two former leaks, now closed: (a) responsive/gallery mobile-crop URLs are injected AFTER that rewrite — assembleResponsiveMobile (carry-responsive-assemble.ts) repoints them to the local desktop copy via the Wix media-id alias; (b) images the extraction never downloaded (no local copy to point at) are fetched up front by fetchMissingCarriedMedia (carry-missing-media.ts) before install.
• Fonts. localizeCarryFonts (carry-fonts.ts) strips @font-face whose family is never applied, downloads the used fonts into the theme's assets/fonts/ (handles protocol-relative //static.parastorage.com, Wix's main font CDN), rewrites url() → ../fonts/, and strips dev-only sourceMappingURL CDN comments. Fonts are also kept OUT of media collection upstream (isFontUrl in media.ts) so they never enter the uploads pipeline.
• Resource-hint links. carryHtml strips <link rel=preload/prefetch/modulepreload/preconnect/dns-prefetch> and any <link> whose href is on a builder CDN — inert in a static carry but a browser would still prefetch them.
• Internal links are local. Nav + body hrefs → imported permalinks via the shared buildPageLinkMap. Editorial/external links (RSS, social, "powered by"/help-article links) are correctly LEFT ALONE — they are content, not asset deps ([[feedback_never_lose_source_content]]).
• Posts are carried. postType: 'post' scopes via is_single() and renders through one shared single.html; per-post CSS still scopes individually by body class.
• It is a real FSE block theme. wp_is_block_theme() → true (theme.json v3 + block templates + parts). Only the page/post body is a single core/html island (the deliberate non-block-editable trade).
• WooCommerce store pages get chrome + rich product marketing (v4). When the run has products, the reconstruct emits templates/single-product.html + templates/archive-product.html wrapped in a dedicated header-store part + canonical footer. archive-product.html wraps wp:woocommerce/legacy-template (classic shop grid + sorting/pagination). single-product.html uses MODERN WC product blocks for the buy box (product-image-gallery + core/post-title + product-rating + product-price + product-summary + add-to-cart-form + product-meta) so order is controllable, then renders the product's rich source marketing FULL-WIDTH below via core/post-content. That post_content is produced by scripts/enrich-product-marketing.ts (flow step 5a): it reconstructs each product page's marketing sections (everything but the gallery/hero Woo reproduces + footer chrome) into CORE blocks via the block path's reconstructPagePattern (with a per-section core/html fallback where reconstruction would drop content), and sets the short Shopify blurb as the product excerpt (shown by product-summary). theme.json carries the captured palette/font tokens (loadCarryDesignTokens) so the core blocks resolve their color/font references. The source's "you may also like" lands at the end of the marketing (the standalone woocommerce/related-products block does not render on this template). Provision also sets woocommerce_coming_soon=no (WC 8.x+ ships it ON). If NO header can be isolated, the handler emits a warnings[] entry and store pages fall back to WC's bare defaults. Product data fidelity still depends on the extraction tier (Tier 1 = no variant images / collections→categories); marketing fidelity depends on the captured section specs (a JS-rendered comparison table whose columns weren't captured renders sparse).

Known limitations (state these in the report; do not let them masquerade as success)

• CSS-file url() backgrounds only rewrite on exact map-key match. Carried HTML <img>/srcset, font url()s, and inline url() self-host robustly (see "Self-hosting seams" above — incl. Wix transform URLs via rewriteMediaUrls's longest-source-first ordering). But background-image url()s in the scoped CSS sheets are only rewritten when the exact URL is a map key; a relative/query-string background can still point at the source. This is no longer a silent gap: the residual-CDN audit flags any that survive (residualCdnAssets), so it shows up in the run-report instead of shipping unnoticed.
• data-pin-media (Pinterest) transform URLs still mangle — invisible (not rendered), harmless; the candidate collector doesn't scan that attribute.
• Non-semantic chrome (headers ride inline). On sites without top-level <header>/<footer> tags (many Wix/Squarespace — and Shopify, whose <header> is wrapped deeply enough that splitRegions doesn't lift it), the separate header/footer parts come back empty and the chrome rides INLINE in each page's main island. Content pages render fine (their island carries the header); WooCommerce store pages — which have no island — instead use the extracted header-store part (see "store pages get chrome" above).
• Dynamic behavior dropped. Scripts are stripped; carousels, menus, scroll effects won't animate. Static computed layout is carried.
• Wix scale offset (the dominant fidelity gap). Carried Wix layout renders larger than the source capture at the same width (Wix's responsive scaling is JS-driven and absent in static carry), pushing content below the fold. Worst on the homepage. This — not media/links — is the open lever.
• CSS weight. Per-page sheets carry treeshaken source CSS; on chrome-less Wix the full chrome CSS duplicates into every page/post sheet (50 sheets × ~150KB). Acceptable for a parity path.

When you finish

Summarize the carry vs block parity scores side by side and the honest itemized gaps on the worst pages.

Pixel scores on dynamic (Wix/JS) sites carry real capture noise — quantify it before claiming a win. Capturing the SAME built site 2–3 times moved the overall score ±0.02, and individual dynamic content pages (blog feeds, galleries) swung 0.10–0.12 from lazy-load/animation timing. On corneliusholmes that spread exceeded the carry-vs-block gap → the numeric A/B is a tie, even though the carried pages are content-faithful. So: report the multi-capture spread, and separate correctness wins (self-hosted assets via residualCdnAssets=0, local links, posts rendering — verify each visually/by HTTP, never from memory) from pixel-score wins (often within noise). Recommend next steps from the evidence — the Wix scale offset is the highest-leverage open item, not media or links.