Animejs

animejs — vector choreography, earned

Stage: Phase 9 — Motion (DIRECTION-gated) - Reads: design/DIRECTION.md (the commissioned moment), design/SYSTEM.md §motion, lib/motion.ts, the authored SVG - Writes: ONE SVG choreography (components/motion/*) + its drawn static state + the animeEase/animeDur mirror in lib/motion.ts

Standard

motion remains THE animation library — taste's stack lock is not up for renegotiation. anime.js is the one specialist hired beside it, and only for territory motion cannot reach: sequencing many SVG paths on one clock, morphing a path's d, walking an element along a path, staggering a 2D field, and scrubbing any of that against scroll position. That moment IS the signature move or it is not built. The empirical test: delete the dependency and try to rebuild the commissioned moment — if pathLength plus a CSS transition gets you 90% of the way, the dependency was never earned and the gate below should have caught it.

• The dependency is the design decision. A commissioned SVG-timeline moment costs +~19 KB gz, ~23 KB once onScroll scrubs it (per STACK.md). That is award-canon's Weight as a Feature applied to motion: the byte budget is set before the choreography, not apologized for after.
• One moment, one engine. Same budget as showpiece — one commissioned moment per site; a second anime.js moment means the first one wasn't the signature. The single exception is ultraweb:micro-interactions' scramble escalation: a micro-tier reuse of the text module on an already-installed engine, never a new commissioned moment and never a reason to install.
• The finished artwork paints first. The SVG renders in server HTML at its final state; the timeline enhances it after mount. It is never the LCP element and never mounts hidden — ultraweb:hero's rule, inherited.
• Reduced motion lands the FINAL state. anime.js ships zero reduced-motion support (verified: zero matches in dist, per STACK.md), so this skill supplies it in two layers. A path left at full dashoffset under reduce is invisible content, not restraint.
• The clock stops when nobody is watching. A non-scrubbed timeline pauses on visibilitychange and when the root leaves the viewport (IntersectionObserver); a scrubbed one gets this free from onScroll.
• Every number comes from lib/motion.ts. anime.js runs in milliseconds where motion runs in seconds; the mirror below is the only place that conversion exists.
• Boundaries are hard, not stylistic. Route transitions, drag, gestures, springs, and component lifecycle stay on motion — see the table. anime.js touching any of them is fragmentation, not capability.

Process

1. Gate check — all four or stop. (a) design/DIRECTION.md commissions the moment BY NAME and cites ultraweb:animejs; (b) the moment needs ≥2 of: multi-path timeline sequencing, d morph, motion path, 2D grid stagger, split-text choreography, scroll-scrubbed SVG; (c) SYSTEM.md §motion records intensity ≥2 — ≥3 for a scrubbed or pinned timeline; (d) the artwork exists as authored SVG (ultraweb:shape-language), not a traced blob. Any "no" → stop and return to the pipeline. A single path draw belongs to motion's pathLength or a CSS stroke-dashoffset transition — ultraweb:icons has the line-draw recipe, ultraweb:scroll-motion has the scroll half, and both cost zero bytes.
2. Install in Phase 9, never at scaffold: verify with npm view animejs version, then install that version. Never @types/animejs — it is v3 and fights the bundled types (per STACK.md).
3. Extend lib/motion.ts with the animeEase/animeDur mirror. No raw durations or beziers enter a component.
4. Build the static drawn artwork first and ship the page with it. Only then add the "use client" leaf: createScope({ root, mediaQueries }) inside useEffect, teardown via scope.current?.revert().
5. Author the moment as ONE createTimeline, not N parallel animate() calls — a single clock is the whole reason the engine is here. Scrub it by passing onScroll({ …, sync: true }) as the timeline's autoplay.
6. Verify empirically: a performance recording ≥5s of the moment — steady 60fps, zero long tasks >50ms (driven with Playwright browser_run_code_unsafe + the performance/PerformanceObserver API, the house mechanism); emulate prefers-reduced-motion and confirm every path reads drawn and every split line reassembled; run npm run build and hand the measured gzip delta plus the DIRECTION.md citation to ultraweb:gate-performance for design/QA.md.

Engine ownership

Moment	Owner
Micro feedback, simple reveals	CSS — the default, unchanged
Component lifecycle: whileInView, AnimatePresence, layout/FLIP, springs, gestures	motion/react
Scroll that is a pure function of position	CSS animation-timeline
Scroll needing spring-smoothing, velocity, or cross-element choreography	motion useScroll
SVG choreography — multi-path draw, morph, motion path, grid-stagger field, split-text timeline; scroll-scrubbed SVG sequences	anime.js — this skill, DIRECTION-gated
Route transitions	View Transitions / template.tsx / motion — anime.js NEVER
Drag and gestures	motion (domMax). createDraggable is the heaviest module and is not installed — two drag systems is fragmentation

Named moves

Six moves, all inside the one commissioned timeline. Each names the API that does it; nothing here is a second moment.

• Line-draw reveal — svg.createDrawable(".curve") fed to draw: ["0 0", "0 1"]. Multi-path is the point: delay: stagger(120) sequences a diagram's strokes in reading order. One path alone does not clear the gate.
• Morph sequence — { d: svg.morphTo("#target-path") } on a timeline step. Source and target need matching point counts and no baked transforms (ultraweb:shape-language authors both).
• Motion-path traveler — { ...svg.createMotionPath("#lead") } spreads translateX/translateY/rotate onto the traveling element, so a marker rides the same geometry the reveal just drew.
• Grid-stagger field — stagger(60, { grid: [cols, rows], from: "center" }): a 2D wave across a tile field. This is a different animal from an entrance reveal — motion-language's 6-item stagger cap still governs entrances, and the field lives only here.
• Split-text choreography — splitText(el, { chars: true, accessible: true }), then stagger its .chars/.words on the timeline. accessible: true is the default — never turn it off; .revert() rides the scope cleanup.
• Rough-annotation underline/circle — the hand-drawn marker gesture, authored as two or three deliberately imperfect SVG passes and drawn by this same timeline at the micro tier. It replaces a fourth animation runtime for one effect (per STACK.md) — the effect survives, the dependency does not. It rides an already-cleared gate and never counts toward the ≥2.

Wiring — the mirror and the scope

// lib/motion.ts — anime.js mirror, added only when DIRECTION commissions the engine
import { cubicBezier } from "animejs";
export const animeEase = {
  out: cubicBezier(...ease.out), inOut: cubicBezier(...ease.inOut), in: cubicBezier(...ease.in),
} as const;
export const animeDur = { micro: dur.micro * 1000, small: dur.small * 1000, section: dur.section * 1000 } as const; // anime.js runs in ms, motion in s

Reduced motion is two mandatory layers: CSS authored inside @media (prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference), and the Scope's own media query in JS.

// components/motion/<moment>.tsx — inside useEffect of a "use client" leaf; root is the ref OBJECT
import { animate, createScope, svg, utils } from "animejs";
import { animeEase, animeDur } from "@/lib/motion";

createScope({ root, mediaQueries: { reduceMotion: "(prefers-reduced-motion: reduce)" } })
  .add((self) => {
    if (self.matches.reduceMotion) { utils.set(svg.createDrawable(".curve"), { draw: "0 1" }); return; } // final DRAWN state
    animate(svg.createDrawable(".curve"), { draw: ["0 0", "0 1"], ease: animeEase.out, duration: animeDur.section });
  });

The Scope holds a MediaQueryList and re-runs on its change event, so toggling the OS setting live is handled and prior instances are reverted first. The reduce branch lands the final state — drawn path, assembled text — never a hidden one, and it goes through svg.createDrawable() too: draw is not a real attribute, so a raw selector writes an inert draw="0 1" and nothing is drawn (per STACK.md).

Verified traps

• ease: "cubicBezier(0.22, 1, 0.36, 1)" as a STRING silently runs LINEAR. A console.warn is the only signal. Import the function and pass it — that is exactly what animeEase above exists for. Never forward a raw CSS custom-property string.
• An unknown ease name falls back to linear with NO warning at all. "spring", "spring(1,80,10,0)", and any typo degrade silently. Validate against the eases keys before passing a derived value through.
• spring({ bounce: .7 }) returns an object whose computed .duration OVERRIDES the tween's. Setting both is a silent conflict — pick one.
• onScroll's default sync is 'play pause' — threshold playback, not scrubbing. Scrubbing needs sync: true; a number (e.g. 0.25) adds lag-smoothing, an ease remaps progress.
• splitText rewrites innerHTML and installs a ResizeObserver that re-splits on resize. accessible defaults to true and keeps it screen-reader-safe — the defect is turning it off; without a .revert() you leak the observer and ship mangled markup.
• @types/animejs is v3. Types ship with the package; installing the DefinitelyTyped one shadows them.
• createScope({ root }) takes the ref OBJECT, not root.current — passing .current silently loses selector scoping.
• Cleanup with scope.current?.revert() — optional chaining, because StrictMode double-invokes effects and the ref may not be populated on the discarded pass (per STACK.md).
• DOM-touching calls throw during SSR. The top-level import is safe; animate, splitText, and onScroll live inside useEffect only.

Pass criteria

Record all six in design/SYSTEM.md (decision + bundle delta) and design/QA.md (measurements) before the gates run:

1. Performance recording shows steady 60fps over ≥5s of the moment, zero long tasks >50ms.
2. ≤2 concurrent SVG choreographies per viewport — attribute animation is compositor-unfriendly and the budget is not negotiable.
3. Reduced-motion emulation lands the final state on every animated node: paths drawn, split text reassembled, nothing at zero opacity.
4. ultraweb:gate-performance carries a bundle entry: the measured gzip contribution, named imports only, and the DIRECTION.md line that commissioned it.
5. The LCP element is server-rendered text or image, not the SVG; console clean on first paint and after revert().
6. A non-scrubbed timeline is paused on a hidden tab and once the root scrolls out of view — background the tab, scroll it off, and confirm the clock stopped; a scrubbed timeline inherits this from onScroll.

Anti-patterns

Greppable — each should return zero:

• import \* as .* from "animejs" / import anime from — v4 has no default export, and a star import defeats the barrel's tree-shaking
• @types/animejs in package.json — the v3 package, and it shadows the bundled types
• ease: 'cubicBezier / ease: "cubicBezier — the string form is silently linear
• createDraggable — drag is motion's, at domMax; two drag systems is fragmentation
• sync: 'play pause' on a timeline meant to scrub — threshold playback, and it is also the silent default when the key is missing
• accessible: false — turning off the visually-hidden mirror shreds the text for screen readers
• duration: 0. in a file carrying from "animejs" — someone pasted motion's seconds into a millisecond engine

Detect the engine by IMPORT SPECIFIER (from "animejs"), never by a bare API name: animate( is also motion/react and WAAPI, so every call-site check above is scoped to files that carry that import. The dependency itself is not a grep but a two-part check: animejs in package.json passes only with BOTH a file importing from "animejs" under app/components AND a design/DIRECTION.md line commissioning the moment by name — either half missing is an uncommissioned engine.

And the constitutional one: a second animation engine in the bundle with no DIRECTION.md line commissioning it by name is slop wearing a dependency. motion is the animation library; this is the one specialist, hired for one moment, removable the day that moment is cut.

Worked example — Kaffeewerk Ost, /roesterei roast-profile sequence

Moved to references/example.md — read only when this build's case is genuinely ambiguous; the sections above are the decision material.

Composes with

Moved to references/composes.md — the handoff map; load it when orchestrating this skill against its neighbors.