After-Effects-mcp-pro

After Effects MCP Pro

Claude works inside Adobe After Effects like a senior motion designer: it builds, watches its own output, fixes what fails, and renders.

Built by Claude in After Effects from one sentence: "a quick, very professional clip with a simple sound that says hello with a wink".

العربية

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Why this one?

Most After Effects MCP servers expose a fixed list of commands, such as "create text layer" or "set keyframe", and leave the model blind: it never sees what it made. AE MCP Pro takes a different approach:

	Typical AE MCP	AE MCP Pro
What Claude can do	A dozen fixed commands	Anything scriptable, through ExtendScript plus a pro motion library
Can Claude see the result?	No	Yes: frame grids plus a motion, keyframe and audio timeline
Quality control	None	Automatic checks: safe area, empty frames, linear keys, motion blur, audio sync
References	—	Analyse a reference video, image or song (beats → markers), then compare your comp side by side
Safety	—	Checkpoints + revert, read-only mode, raw code off by default, outputs limited to one folder, every call logged
Expertise	—	On-demand expert guides (transitions, type, camera, audio sync, expressions, delivery, references)
Rendering	In-app (freezes AE) or none	Background aerender, so AE stays usable
Voice-over	—	Built-in TTS with OS voices
Transport	Often polled JSON files	Local HTTP with a secret token, results returned in the same call
Token cost	Not measured	Measured and optimised (see below)

Promo video

A preview of the full promo (56 s, 1080p, 60 fps), built from one prompt with this tool.

Why people will want it

• One sentence in, a finished piece out. Claude builds the layers, keyframes, camera and transitions inside After Effects, and you get a real project you can open and edit.
• Music-first. It reads the beat, marks the drops and breaks, and lands cuts on the beat, with a sound effect on the hits.
• It checks its own work. Frames, timing and audio are reviewed before rendering, and common mistakes are caught with a message that says what to fix.
• Arabic-ready. Right-to-left type, calligraphy, and Google Fonts that load straight into the session.
• Safe by default. Raw code is off until you turn it on, outputs stay in one folder, and every call is logged without its content.

Quick start

1. Install the extension and the panel (full guide).
2. In After Effects: Window → Extensions → Claude Bridge. Wait for the green dot.
3. Ask Claude for a motion piece in one sentence. Start with a short one, like the 5-second example below.

New in 1.6.0: a sound-effect library with hit points, review checks for render traps, live font loading, and a render that reports incomplete when it stops early. See the changelog.

How it works

1. A CEP panel called Claude Bridge runs inside After Effects. It listens on 127.0.0.1 with a secret token, logs every call, and has a switch that turns off raw code execution.
2. An MCP server (Node, packaged as a one-click Claude Desktop extension) exposes 14 tools. It handles the heavy lifting outside AE: frame analysis, contact sheets, WAV envelopes, background renders and TTS.
3. Claude's code runs in AE's ExtendScript engine, with AEH, a motion-design library that turns a page of boilerplate into one line.

Tools

Tool	What it does
ae_status	Bridge check: AE version, project, active comp
ae_inspect	Project items, or a comp's layers, timing, parents, effects and animated or expression-driven properties
ae_run_jsx	Runs ExtendScript with full DOM access and the AEH library, as one undo step
ae_preview	Returns frames as an image grid; ui: true screenshots the After Effects window itself
ae_review	Expert review: frame grid, timeline strip and automatic checks (see below). It also scores music sync: every cut and big moment (inside precomps too) against the song's beat hits, and flags off-beat or too-fast cuts. With reference, a side-by-side comparison against a video
ae_reference	Analyses a reference: image, video (fps, cuts, motion rhythm) or music (BPM, beat grid, strong hits → comp markers)
ae_checkpoint	Project snapshots before risky edits; revert (always snapshots the current state first)
ae_guide	Loads one expert cookbook on demand: transitions, typography, camera-3d, audio-sync, expressions, deliver, reference
ae_render / ae_render_status	Background H.264 render via aerender, with progress
ae_tts	Generates a voice-over WAV with Windows SAPI or macOS say voices
ae_music	Royalty-free music + SFX library: adds downloaded tracks after a license check, measures BPM/beats/energy, finds the right track for a brief. use returns a rhythm map (cut pulse, quiet/loud sections, drops, breaks, strongest hits), drops typed markers and can trim the track so the drop lands where you want (drop_at). SFX (sfx: true, automatic under 2 s) store their hit point (the impact, the whoosh pass, the riser peak), tagged by motion type; use puts that hit exactly on the frame you name
ae_fonts	Lists installed fonts, installs free Google Fonts (OFL only, per user, no admin), and previews 3 options side by side so you can pick. On Windows new fonts load into the running session (no logout)
ae_memory	Technique cards learned from references (saved automatically, you can delete them), lessons and recipes; your personal style only when you ask

The visual review

Under the frames is a timeline. Orange bars show how much moves between samples. White ticks are keyframes. Cyan is audio loudness. Grey lines mark seconds. In this example you can read the beats straight off the strip: the letters reveal at the start, the wink lands mid-clip together with its chime and a cluster of keyframes, then the clip holds and fades. Alongside the image, Claude gets a text report:

Motion: most motion: 0.17–0.5s; still/holds: 1.17–1.5s, 2.83–3.5s; brightness change (fade?): 3.5–3.83s
Audio: whoosh.wav: starts 0.00s, loudest around 0.43s; wink_chime.wav: starts 1.76s, loudest around 1.87s
Checks: no issues found

The motion measure is normalised per frame, so a fade to black is reported as a brightness change, not as motion. Checks include content touching the frame edge, empty frames, linear keyframes, moving layers without motion blur, keyframes after the comp ends, layers outside the time range, missing footage, expression errors, and render traps: CC Radial Blur (stalls renders), blurs on adjustment layers that pull in transparent edges, nearly coplanar 3D layers with different orientation that cut through each other, and 2D text sitting under 3D layers.

With reference: "C:/refs/intro.mp4" the grid pairs your frames with the reference at the same normalised times, and the report gives layout similarity per moment, a motion-rhythm correlation (1 = same timing) and average colours. The strip then shows your motion in orange and the reference's in violet.

AEH: the motion library

var t = AEH.text(comp, "Hello", { size: 280, color: "#F5F5F7" });     // centred on its visual centre
AEH.textAnim(t, "rise", { start: 0.1, dur: 0.8 });                   // per-character reveal
var ring = AEH.shape(comp, "ellipse", { size: [120, 120], stroke: "#fff", width: 30 });
AEH.drawOn(ring, 0.45, 0.95, "out");                                 // trim-path draw-on
AEH.anim(AEH.prop(ring, "ADBE Transform Group/ADBE Scale"),
         [[1.72, [100,100,100]], [1.8, [100,0,100]], [2.1, [100,110,100]], [2.2, [100,100,100]]], "smooth");
AEH.expr(AEH.prop(ring, "ADBE Transform Group/ADBE Rotate Z"), "wiggle", { freq: 2, amp: 4 });
AEH.audio(comp, "C:/sfx/chime.wav", 1.76, -7);

• Curves: ease smooth out in expo snap linear hold
• Text presets: rise drop pop blur fade typewriter tracking, by character, word or line
• Expression presets: wiggle bounce (inertial overshoot) loop pingpong spin follow blink
• Other helpers: shape (rect, ellipse, star, path), drawOn, bg (gradient background), fx (any effect plus its params by name), precompose, stagger, marker, audio, importFile, listEffects, and recipe (runs your own saved snippets)

The full example is in examples/hello-wink.jsx.

Token efficiency

Measured with npm run bench. Counts use the Claude tokenizer from @anthropic-ai/tokenizer, which is close to but not identical to current models. Image cost uses Anthropic's formula, ≈ width × height / 750 after downscaling.

What	Before optimisation	Now	Saving
Tool definitions (sent with every turn)	1,625 (10 tools)	1,792 (14 tools)	128 tokens per tool vs 163 (includes read-only/destructive annotations)
ae_inspect of a 10-layer animated comp	1,430	518	−64 %
Code Claude writes for the hello-wink clip (raw ExtendScript vs AEH)	4,001	1,362	−66 %
ae_preview, single frame	1,229	786	−36 %
ae_preview, 6-frame grid	1,231	1,050	−15 %
ae_review, 12 frames plus timeline	1,533	1,202	−22 %

For comparison, the original fixed-command after-effects-mcp spends 2,085 tokens on 13 tool definitions. AE MCP Pro spends 1,088 on 12 tools that can do far more.

How it stays lean:

• Compact responses: JSON without whitespace. ae_inspect sends only non-default fields and shortens property paths.
• One call instead of many: ae_review returns frames, timing analysis, audio sync and QA checks together. ae_run_jsx can build a whole scene section in one step.
• The library does the boilerplate: Claude writes intent (textAnim(t, "rise")), not 40 lines of property plumbing.
• Right-sized images: big enough to judge layout and motion, small enough to be cheap. Pass width when you need detail.
• Lean schemas: tools/list drops $schema, title and execution noise (~30 tokens per tool, every turn).
• Knowledge on demand: the seven expert guides (430–930 tokens each) load only when a task needs one, instead of living in a big always-on prompt.
• Text, not images, where text is enough: beat analysis and checkpoints return a few lines; images only when Claude has to see.
• Opt-in memory: nothing is injected into context unless you ask Claude to use your saved style or recipes.

Install

📘 Full step-by-step guide, daily usage and troubleshooting: docs/SETUP.md

Requirements: After Effects 2022 or later (tested on 2026 / 26.3), Claude Desktop or Claude Code (or any MCP client), and Windows 10/11. macOS support is written but untested.

1. Panel: clone the repo (git clone https://github.com/malkawi06/After-Effects-mcp-pro), then run:

   • Windows: powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install\install-windows.ps1
   • macOS: sh install/install-macos.sh

   The installer copies the panel to your user CEP extensions folder and enables PlayerDebugMode, which unsigned panels need.

2. After Effects: go to Preferences → Scripting & Expressions and tick Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network. Restart AE. Under Window → Extensions → Claude Bridge you should see a green dot.

3. Claude Desktop: download after-effects-mcp-pro.mcpb (in the install folder), then go to Settings → Extensions → Install Extension and choose it. It runs on Claude Desktop's built-in Node, so there is nothing else to install. Claude Code or any other MCP client (needs Node.js 18+):

   cd After-Effects-mcp-pro/server && npm ci && npm run build
   claude mcp add after-effects -- node "$PWD/dist/server/index.js"
   

   Other clients: add {"mcpServers": {"after-effects": {"command": "node", "args": ["/full/path/to/server/dist/server/index.js"]}}} to their MCP config.

4. Optional: add skill/SKILL.md as a Claude skill. It holds the workflow and the senior motion-design rules for timing, easing, layout, type, colour and sound levels.

Try it

"Make a 5-second 1080×1920 promo for 'NASA Space Apps Irbid': bold kinetic type, one accent colour, a whoosh on each word, and render it."

"Here's a reference: C:\refs\intro.mp4. Rebuild it with my logo and make the easing smoother."

"Open my comp Lower Third, review it, and fix whatever looks amateur."

"That wink was great. Save it as a recipe called wink-o." (and next time: "use my wink-o recipe on the word Hello")

Security

• The panel listens only on 127.0.0.1, requires a random token (stored in ~/.ae-claude-bridge.json), accepts JSON only, and rejects any request carrying a browser Origin/Referer.
• Read-only switch in the panel: Claude can inspect, preview and review, but not change the project.
• ae_checkpoint snapshots the project before risky edits; revert never loses work (it snapshots the current state first).
• Every call is logged in the panel. Untick Allow Claude to run raw ExtendScript to block arbitrary code; the fixed tools keep working.
• ExtendScript runs with After Effects' own permissions. Use it with clients and prompts you trust.

Limits

These features have no scripting API, so Claude can only reach them through screen control: Roto Brush, Content-Aware Fill, Camera/3D Tracker analysis, Puppet pin creation, AI generative features, and custom plugin UIs. Claude judges motion from sampled frames and numbers. It does not watch or hear the clip in real time, so your eye on the final render still matters.

Development

cd server
npm install
npm run build   # bundle to dist/
npm test        # 53 checks: MCP end-to-end (mock bridge), panel security, AEH library
npm run bench   # token benchmark
npm run pack    # build after-effects-mcp-pro.mcpb

panel/      CEP panel: manifest, HTTP bridge (main.js), ExtendScript host + AEH library (host/host.jsx)
server/     MCP server (src/index.js), tests, token benchmark, extension manifest
skill/      Claude skill with workflow and motion-design rules
install/    Windows/macOS installers and registry file
examples/   hello-wink.jsx, written with AEH
docs/       images used in this README

Status

v1.2. 53 automated checks pass. Live on After Effects 2026 (26.3, Windows 11): the panel, ae_status, ae_tts and ae_run_jsx with the AEH library were verified. The live session also caught an ExtendScript quirk (chained a ? b : c ? d : e is mis-parsed), which is now fixed and documented. The demo above was rendered in After Effects.

Developer

Mohammad Malkawi · @malkawi06

Computer Networks & Cybersecurity student from Jordan, building at the intersection of AI, design and hardware. Mohammad designed and directed After Effects MCP Pro: the idea, the requirements (expert-level output, visual self-review, opt-in memory, minimal token cost) and the testing on a real After Effects setup. The code was written in collaboration with Claude (Anthropic) as an AI pair-programmer.

Issues, ideas and pull requests are welcome.

License

MIT © Mohammad Malkawi