---

name: render-icon-pipeline locale: caveman-ultra source_locale: en source_commit: 82c77053 fence_basis_commit: 82c77053 translator: "Julius Brussee homage — caveman" translation_date: "2026-04-26" description: > Run viz pipeline → render icons from existing glyphs. Entry for viz subproject: palette gen, data build, manifest create, icon render for skills, agents, teams. Always use build.sh as entry — never call Rscript direct. license: MIT allowed-tools: Read Bash Grep Glob metadata: author: Philipp Thoss version: "1.1" domain: visualization complexity: basic language: multi tags: visualization, rendering, pipeline, icons, glyphs, build

Render Icon Pipeline

Run viz pipeline end-to-end → render icons from existing glyphs. Palette gen, data build, manifest create, icon render for skills, agents, teams.

Canonical entry: bash viz/build.sh [flags] from project root, or bash build.sh [flags] from viz/. Script handles platform detection (WSL, Docker, native), R binary select, step ordering. Never call Rscript direct for build scripts — that path only for MCP server config.

Use When

• After create/modify glyph fns
• After add new skills, agents, teams to registries
• Icons need re-render for new/updated palettes
• Full pipeline rebuild (after infra changes)
• Setting up viz env first time

In

• Optional: Entity type — skill, agent, team, all (default all)
• Optional: Palette — specific name or all (default all)
• Optional: Domain filter — specific domain for skill icons (e.g. git, design)
• Optional: Render mode — full, incremental, dry-run (default incremental)

Do

Step 1: Verify Prereqs

Ensure env ready for rendering.

1. Confirm viz/build.sh exists:

   ls -la viz/build.sh
   

2. Verify Node.js available:

   node --version
   

3. Check viz/config.yml exists (platform-specific R path profiles):

   ls viz/config.yml
   

build.sh handles R binary resolution auto — no need verify R paths manually. WSL → /usr/local/bin/Rscript (WSL-native R), Docker → container R, native Linux/macOS → Rscript from PATH.

→ build.sh, Node.js, config.yml present.

If err: config.yml missing → pipeline falls back to system defaults. Node.js missing → install via nvm.

Step 2: Run Pipeline

build.sh exec 5 steps in order:

1. Generate palette colors (R) → palette-colors.json + colors-generated.js
2. Build data (Node) → skills.json
3. Build manifests (Node) → icon-manifest.json, agent-icon-manifest.json, team-icon-manifest.json
4. Render icons (R) → icons/ + icons-hd/ WebP files
5. Generate terminal glyphs (Node) → cli/lib/glyph-data.json

Full pipeline (all types, all palettes, std + HD):

bash viz/build.sh

Incremental (skip icons existing on disk):

bash viz/build.sh --skip-existing

Single domain (skills only):

bash viz/build.sh --only design

Single entity type:

bash viz/build.sh --type skill
bash viz/build.sh --type agent
bash viz/build.sh --type team

Dry run (preview no rendering):

bash viz/build.sh --dry-run

Std size only (skip HD):

bash viz/build.sh --no-hd

All flags after build.sh passed through to build-all-icons.R.

→ Icons rendered to viz/public/icons/<palette>/ + viz/public/icons-hd/<palette>/.

If err:

• renv hang on NTFS: viz .Rprofile bypasses renv/activate.R + sets .libPaths() direct. Ensure run from viz/ (build.sh does auto via cd "$(dirname "$0")")
• Missing R pkgs: Run Rscript -e "install.packages(c('ggplot2', 'ggforce', 'ggfx', 'ragg', 'magick', 'future', 'furrr', 'digest'))" from R env build.sh selects
• No glyph mapped: Entity needs glyph fn — use create-glyph before rendering

Step 3: Verify Output

Confirm render completed.

1. Check file counts match:

   find viz/public/icons/cyberpunk -name "*.webp" | wc -l
   find viz/public/icons-hd/cyberpunk -name "*.webp" | wc -l
   

2. Check reasonable file sizes (2-80 KB per icon)
3. Run audit-icon-pipeline for comprehensive check

→ File counts match manifest entry counts. Sizes in expected range.

If err: counts don't match → some glyphs errored during render. Check build log for [ERROR] lines.

CLI Flag Reference

All flags passed through build.sh → build-all-icons.R:

Flag	Default	Description
--type <types>	all	Comma-separated: skill, agent, team
--palette <name>	all	Single palette or all (9 palettes)
--only <filter>	none	Domain (skills) or entity ID (agents/teams)
--skip-existing	off	Skip icons with existing WebP files
--dry-run	off	List what would be generated
--size <n>	512	Output dimension in pixels
--glow-sigma <n>	4	Glow blur radius
--workers <n>	auto	Parallel workers (detectCores()-1)
--no-cache	off	Ignore content-hash cache
--hd	on	Enable HD variants (1024px)
--no-hd	off	Skip HD variants
--strict	off	Exit on first sub-script failure

What build.sh Does Internally

For ref only — do NOT run these manually:

cd viz/
# 1. Platform detection: sets R_CONFIG_ACTIVE (wsl, docker, or unset)
# 2. R binary selection: WSL → /usr/local/bin/Rscript, Docker → same, native → Rscript
# 3. $RSCRIPT generate-palette-colors.R
# 4. node build-data.js
# 5. node build-icon-manifest.js --type all
# 6. $RSCRIPT build-all-icons.R "$@"  (flags passed through)
# 7. node build-terminal-glyphs.js

Docker Alternative

Pipeline can also run in Docker:

cd viz
docker compose up --build

Runs full pipeline in isolated Linux env + serves on port 8080.

Check

• Ran bash viz/build.sh (not bare Rscript)
• Palette colors generated (JSON + JS)
• Data files built from registries
• Manifests generated from data
• Icons rendered for target types + palettes
• File counts match
• Sizes in expected range (2-80 KB)

Traps

• Calling Rscript direct: Never Rscript build-icons.R or Rscript generate-palette-colors.R manually. Always bash build.sh [flags]. Direct calls bypass platform detection + may use wrong R binary (Windows R via ~/bin/Rscript wrapper instead of WSL-native R at /usr/local/bin/Rscript). Note: Windows R path in CLAUDE.md + guides for MCP server config only, not build scripts.
• Wrong cwd: build.sh CDs to own dir auto (cd "$(dirname "$0")"), so call from anywhere: bash viz/build.sh from project root works.
• Stale manifests: build.sh runs Steps 1-5 in order, manifests always regen before render. Only need manifests no render → node viz/build-data.js && node viz/build-icon-manifest.js (Node steps no need R).
• renv not activated: .Rprofile workaround needs running from viz/ — build.sh handles. Using --vanilla or running R from another dir skips it.
• Parallel on Windows: Windows no support fork-based parallelism — pipeline auto-selects multisession via config.yml.

→

• audit-icon-pipeline — detect missing glyphs + icons before render
• create-glyph — create new glyph fns for entities missing icons
• enhance-glyph — improve existing glyphs before re-render