AfterEffects-MCP-IMT + SKILLS — After Effects for AI agents

[AfterEffects-MCP-IMT + SKILLS — After Effects for AI agents]

AfterEffects-MCP-IMT + SKILLS — After Effects for AI agents, built to be safe to hand over

Let an AI assistant (Claude Desktop, Cursor, ChatGPT, Google Antigravity or any MCP client) work inside your running Adobe After Effects: read the project, build and edit comps, layers, effects, keyframes, text, masks and expressions, render check frames — from plain language.

Every Adobe UI language · vision: mattes and time by sight · a large skills library · built for AI and generative features. AfterEffects-MCP-IMT works with every UI language Adobe ships, and the agent sees the frame: it renders frames and looks at them, draws Object Matte on what it sees — a lasso around each person to keep, ⊕ / ⊖ points for what the matte missed or caught — reads the strokes back and checks a preview that marks the gaps and every person it was told to keep (macOS); it syncs an AI-generated layer with the plate frame by frame — finds the matching frame for every frame, then cuts and shifts the layer so each lands on it — and checks every frame. After Effects' scripting has no API for Object Matte strokes, none of the other After Effects MCP servers we compared draws them, and Adobe's own AI Assistant for After Effects (beta) sees a single frame and writes scripts it does not run. It comes with a large skills library and is built for Adobe's AI and generative features — Roto Brush and Object Matte, Content-Aware Fill, generated image sources animated as native layers.

Two parts, made to work together:

• The MCP server — ~270 small, safe operations behind two tools, with a dry run, one undo group per call, checkpoints, a project lock and honest errors; Object Matte by sight on macOS (ae_object_matte_ui drives After Effects' own Object Matte tool — there is no API for its strokes).
• The skill (skills/ae) — what the agent should know: the order of work, what a script cannot do in After Effects and how to get around it safely, step-by-step recipes (camera tracking, 3D content on footage, plug-in tests, render, motion graphics, masks), and plug-in knowledge files.

Built for localized After Effects, not just English. Most MCP servers and agent skills for Adobe apps assume the English UI — on a German, Japanese or Russian install their effect, template and menu names stop matching. AfterEffects-MCP-IMT addresses After Effects by its own identifiers (matchNames, command ids) and translates English template names through After Effects' own dictionaries, so the same agent and the same skill work on every UI language After Effects ships — verified live.

By Immersive Media Technologies.

macOS and Windows · After Effects 2024–2026 (26.5 verified on both, every UI language) · Node.js 22+ (none needed with the Claude Desktop extension — verified on macOS and on the Windows Store build of Claude Desktop).

[!CAUTION] This edits real After Effects projects and sends project contents (names, expressions, footage paths, rendered previews) to the AI service you use. Work on a copy, check your provider's data policy for NDA work, and keep AE_MCP_ENABLE_EVAL off unless you need raw scripting.

What you can ask for

• "Point out anything broken in this project — missing footage, fonts, expression errors."
• "Add a glow to every text layer in Intro, 30 % lighter than now, and show me frame 2.0."
• "Import this Illustrator file and animate the title with the text-pop preset."
• "Track the camera on this clip, put a 3D null on the floor and parent the logo to it." (skill)
• "Here is a reference frame: build this lower third natively, with a Speed slider and the texts in Essential Graphics." (skill)
• "Test this plug-in on a solid, dump its parameters, render a frame and tell me if it works." (skill)

The agent combines the operations itself and checks the project between steps; the skill keeps it on the rails.

Install

You need After Effects running on this computer and two permissions:

• macOS — Automation: the first call asks whether your AI client may control After Effects (a refusal shows up later as error −1743: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation).
• Scripting file access: After Effects → Settings → Scripting & Expressions → Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network.

{  "mcpServers": {    "aftereffects": {      "command": "npx",      "args": ["-y", "@immersive-media-technologies/aftereffects-mcp-imt"],      "env": { "MCP_TIMEOUT": "120000" }    }  }}

From source, with a live self-test (the route we use):

git clone https://github.com/Immersive-Media-Technologies/aftereffects-mcp-imt.gitcd aftereffects-mcp-imt && ./install.sh        # Windows: .\install.ps1

The installer checks After Effects and Node, builds, pings the running AE, names what is wrong (−1743, scripting access, Node path) and — after asking — writes the entry into Claude Desktop's, Cursor's and Antigravity's configs, backing them up.

If something does not connect

• spawn npx ENOENT on macOS: GUI apps do not see your shell PATH — put the absolute path of a Node from Homebrew or nodejs.org in place of npx (nvm's Node is invisible to them).
• Set MCP_TIMEOUT to 120000: a cold After Effects start does not fit the default 30 s.
• A timeout with a DIALOG_OPEN message: After Effects is showing a dialog (save prompt, missing footage, a plug-in warning) — the error quotes it; the agent can close it with ae_dialogs or you click it away. On macOS reading and closing dialogs needs Accessibility permission for the client app.
• Windows: AE_MCP_EXE must point to AfterFX.exe when After Effects is not under C:\Program Files\Adobe. No supported GPU (a VM): dismiss the «System Compatibility Report» first. The .mcpb needs no Node.js on the machine — Claude Desktop runs it on its built-in Node (verified with the Microsoft Store build on Windows 11 ARM). Server log: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Claude\logs\mcp-server-<name>.log; mailbox: %TEMP%\mcp-aftereffects.
• If your client caps tool output, raise it to 50 000 — ae_project_info on a real project is bigger than the usual 25 000.

How it stays safe

What to forbid on the client side, if you gate at all: what Cmd+Z cannot revert — eval.run, project.new / open / revert, the purge/consolidate operations, pref.*, render.start. The list and a reference implementation are in docs/AGENT-POLICY.md.

How the agent sees

Adobe gives outside agents no picture: its scripting returns a project's structure, not its pixels; its own connector for AI assistants (Adobe for creativity) does not cover After Effects; and the After Effects AI Assistant (beta) sees «a single screenshot of a single frame» and does not run the scripts it writes.

AfterEffects-MCP-IMT gives the agent two kinds of sight. The model's: every frame it needs comes back as an image — ae_render_frame for the comp, a solo render of one layer for a matte — and the model decides from the picture what to do and where. The server's: where After Effects has no scripting API (Object Matte strokes are mouse strokes in the Layer panel, nothing else), the server looks at After Effects itself — it captures the window, finds the picture in the Layer panel, maps the model's picture coordinates onto the screen and acts with real mouse events, then looks again to confirm.

Object Matte by sight (ae_object_matte_ui, macOS, AE 26):

1. The layer is rendered solo at the chosen time; the model answers in picture coordinates — a closed lasso around each person or object to keep, ⊕ points for what the matte missed, ⊖ for what it caught by mistake.
2. The server opens the layer, selects the Object Matte tool by its internal tool code (not by a hotkey or a localized name), draws lassos first and points after them, and finds the picture again after every stroke — After Effects shifts the view while it computes.
3. The strokes are read back from the effect; a preview renders the matte over the frame, marks the holes inside the subject, and checks every person the model named at head, body and feet.
4. The model fixes what the preview shows with more ⊕ / ⊖ strokes. For a matte that will cut an AI-generated layer, the edge is then pulled inside the silhouette (Shift Edge, Feather) by the effect's internal property names — After Effects shows two groups with the same labels.

Time by sight (recipes/layer-conform.md): an AI-generated layer drifts against the plate — repeated, dropped and frozen frames. Frames of both are rendered and compared one by one, the best match is chosen for every frame (scripts/conform.py refine-cuts, repeats and drops included), and the layer is cut into pieces and each piece shifted so every frame lands on its match — cuts only: a speed between two points would blend frames. Then every frame is checked again.

Everything else the agent reads as data:

• ae_project_info / ae_comp_info / ae_layer_info — the full picture when needed.
• comp.snapshot → edit → comp.diff — a cheap fingerprint before and after: which layers were added, removed or changed, and in what. Verification in a few dozen tokens.
• ae_render_frame — a PNG the agent can look at; compareWith an earlier frame answers "did the picture change, and where" without opening the image.
• property.sample — a camera's position / orientation / zoom at start, middle and end in one call; expression.validate and project.audit — errors before the user hits play.

The skill

skills/ae/SKILL.md is a short router the agent reads first; it points to the one file the task needs:

Use it as a skill in clients that support them (copy skills/ae into ~/.claude/skills/, or point your system prompt at SKILL.md). The motion-graphics recipe routes to topic references from five open MIT skill sets; they are fetched, not bundled — run skills/ae/fetch-vendor.sh once.

Tools

Full list with parameters: docs/TOOLS.md; the operations are listed by ae_catalog at runtime.

Why this one

There are several After Effects MCP servers; most stop at "the AI can run ExtendScript". This one is built around what an autonomous agent needs — and what the person handing over a project needs: a small stable tool surface (two tools instead of 270), a real dry run, undo-safe operations, checkpoints and a project lock, honest errors, an installer that says what is wrong, and a skill that teaches the agent the parts of After Effects no API covers — on any UI language After Effects ships, where most servers stop at the English one. Verified on AE 2026, macOS and Windows.

How the After Effects agents compare on vision — as of 2026-11-06:

Releases

Each version is described on the Releases page; every change is in CHANGELOG.md. Upstream fixes are merged from kumoproductions/mcp-aftereffects by topic.

• v1.1.1 · 2026-11-06 — descriptions with vision next to the UI languages (Object Matte by sight, generated layers synced frame by frame), a dated vision comparison and a «How the agent sees» section.
• v1.1.0 · 2026-11-06 — ae_object_matte_ui: Object Matte by sight (macOS) — lassos and points on a rendered frame, strokes read back, a preview image that marks gaps and the listed people; layer conform recipe (cut-only time, conform.py 1.2.0 with refine-cuts, the matte edge inside the silhouette).
• v1.0.2 · 2026-10-28 — descriptions everywhere: every Adobe UI language, a large skills library, built for Adobe's generative features.
• v1.0.1 · 2026-10-28 — product name AfterEffects-MCP-IMT (was AE-MCP-IMT); server name aftereffects-mcp-imt like the npm package; the MCP Registry entry also lists the npm package.
• v1.0.0 · 2026-10-28 — every After Effects UI language (matchNames, command ids, template names through After Effects' dictionaries; verified live), corrected command list, Apache-2.0.
• v0.5.5 · 2026-10-11 — the After Effects skill (skills/ae), checkpoints + revert, atomic batches, comp snapshot/diff, expression validation, project audit, dialog detection, project lock, frame compare.
• v0.4.4 · 2026-10-04 — Windows: Claude Desktop from the Microsoft Store.
• v0.4.3 · 2026-10-04 — Windows verified (AfterFX.exe -r launch path).
• v0.4.2 · 2026-10-01 — ChatGPT gateway fix; v0.4.1 — ChatGPT in one command; v0.4.0 — one-click installs (.mcpb, Cursor, npm, installers).
• v0.3.5 · 2026-09-30 — the AE Motion skill; v0.3.0 — first public release of the IMT fork.

A note for contributors: the offline transport tests (npm test) expect After Effects to be closed on macOS — with it open the live AE answers the stand-in requests and a few of them fail.

License

Apache License 2.0 — © Immersive Media Technologies.

• Free to use, modify and distribute, commercial use included.
• Attribution is required. Every redistribution of this software or of a work derived from it must carry the notice from NOTICE: AfterEffects-MCP-IMT by Immersive Media Technologies — https://github.com/Immersive-Media-Technologies.
• No warranty.

Third-party notices (upstream MIT code): THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.