AE AI — After Effects Agent Bridge

A portfolio fork and extension of Engine Room Games' After Effects MCP, focused on turning an MCP integration into a more complete AI-assisted workflow inside Adobe After Effects.

The project connects an LLM workflow to After Effects so the assistant can inspect a composition, reason about what should change, execute structured scene operations, and review the result instead of only returning instructions.

This repository is based on the MIT-licensed Engine Room Games project. The original copyright and license are preserved. The ae-astra-bridge work extends that foundation with the features described below.

What I added in this branch

• An AE AI chat panel inside After Effects with a compact conversational UI.

• Persistent sessions and conversation context for multi-step editing.

• Intent routing so normal questions stay conversational while composition requests can execute.

• High-level agent tools such as inspect_scene, build_scene, modify_scene, and review_scene.

• A reference discovery workflow that can surface and reuse visual/motion references.

• A visual review pipeline using composition snapshots and screenshots.

• Job progress, execution-state feedback, error handling, and bridge reconnection improvements.

• A motion-design knowledge layer with curated, learned, and synthesized techniques.

• Cross-platform setup and installer work for macOS and Windows.

• Expanded automated tests around the panel, bridge, installers, schemas, screenshots, and scene tools.

Related MCP server: After Effects MCP Server

Why this project exists

Traditional AI chat can tell an editor what to do. This project explores a different approach: give the model tools, scene context, and a feedback loop so it can act on a real creative application while keeping the result editable by the artist.

Architecture

LLM / Codex-style workflow
          |
          v
   AE AI CEP Panel
          |
          v
 Local MCP Server
   |           |
   |           +--> Motion knowledge / references
   |
   +--> HTTP + WebSocket bridge
                  |
                  v
          ExtendScript / JSX
                  |
                  v
          Adobe After Effects
                  |
                  +--> inspect / modify / screenshot / review

The system intentionally uses larger scene-level operations for agent workflows while preserving lower-level After Effects tools when more control is needed.

Example visual review output

The review pipeline can capture multiple moments from a composition so the assistant can reason about animation state over time instead of judging a single frame.

Technologies

• TypeScript / Node.js

• Model Context Protocol (MCP)

• Adobe CEP + ExtendScript / JSX

• HTTP and WebSocket bridge

• HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

• JSON-schema-based tool validation

• Automated Node.js test suites

• macOS and Windows packaging scripts

Current validation

The current working version has been validated locally with:

npm test
npm run build

Both commands complete successfully on the development machine.

The test suite covers, among other areas:

• panel boot and UI behavior

• runtime/session behavior

• bridge timeout and port drift

• scene snapshots and screenshot integrity

• structured tool schemas

• write queues and job progress

• macOS and Windows installers

• motion knowledge generation

• CEP signatures and package layout

Development setup

Requirements:

• Node.js 22+

• Adobe After Effects

• npm

Install dependencies:

npm install

Build the workspace:

npm run build

Run the tests:

npm test

For local macOS development, the workspace also includes setup and panel installation scripts:

npm run setup:mac
npm run install:panel
npm run doctor

Repository structure

packages/
  ae-panel/       After Effects CEP panel and AE AI interface
  mcp-server/     MCP server, bridge logic, tools, orchestration
  shared/         Shared schemas and types
  jsx/            After Effects ExtendScript operations

knowledge/        Motion-design knowledge and recipes
scripts/          Build, setup, packaging and release utilities
tests/unit/       Automated test suites
demo/             Visual examples
docs/             Architecture and subsystem notes

Upstream foundation

The original project is After Effects MCP by Engine Room Games:

https://github.com/Engine-Room-Games/after-effects-mcp

It provides the core MCP-to-After-Effects foundation used by this fork. This branch is intended to demonstrate the additional agent workflow, UI, orchestration, knowledge, packaging, and reliability work built on top of that foundation.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE.

Original copyright remains with Engine Room as required by the upstream MIT license.