Copycat: Start Fresh Without the Hairballs

Copycat doesn't clone your mess. It maps public vs authenticated views, confirms what stays, and scaffolds a clean shadcn platform in Next.js. You copy the good parts, not the chaos.

Who it’s for

• Designers who want a clean, modern starting point
• Engineers who want clarity on routes, roles, and structure
• Product managers who need a real inventory of what’s still in use
• Business owners who want a new platform without legacy baggage

What it does (in human terms)

• Separates public pages from authenticated ones
• Identifies role-based views and confirms what to keep
• Runs a naming audit to dedupe role variants into one canonical view
• Renames old, messy view names into clean ones
• Builds a new, isolated platform folder with core routes only
• Uses shadcn starter blocks for clean, testable scaffolds
• Adds a simple entry link from the existing landing page
• Sets a modern shadcn global CSS baseline for the new platform

What it does not do

• It does not migrate every legacy screen
• It does not change your auth logic
• It does not delete old code

Quick start

1. Discover what views exist and who can access them
2. Audit naming to dedupe role variants and set canonical names
3. Confirm which views are still needed (and rename them cleanly)
4. Derive the platform name and route segment from existing copy
5. Scaffold a clean boilerplate under app/<platform-segment>
6. Link it from the existing landing header

Where to look next

• SKILL.md for the workflow overview and checkpoints
• reference.md for scans, mapping tips, and gotchas
• examples.md for inventory and scaffold examples
• rules/ for focused rules you can follow step by step