After Effects MCP

An MCP server that edits video in After Effects — from Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client.

after-effects-mcp connects your AI assistant to afterAI, a hosted After Effects pipeline. Send a raw clip and get back a finished, ready-to-post short video: AI upscaling (Topaz), a cinematic color grade, animated subtitles, smooth zoom effects, and beat-synced phonk edits — all rendered in After Effects with paid-tier plugins, on afterAI's machines. No After Effects install, no plugins, no render farm on your side.

Built for creators automating YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Reels. If you found this searching for an "After Effects MCP", this is the fastest way to get real AE edits from an AI agent.

What it does

The finished video is emailed to the account that owns the API key, and is downloadable from the tracking URL.

Related MCP server: After Effects MCP Server

Quick start

1. Get an API key

• Subscribe to a plan: https://getafterai.eu/#pricing

• Create a key: https://getafterai.eu/api-access

The API is plan-gated: each edit_video call spends one credit. If a render fails, the credit is auto-refunded.

2. Install the server

git clone https://github.com/borishalachev1/after-effects-mcp.git
cd after-effects-mcp
npm install
npm run build

This produces dist/index.js, which your MCP client runs.

3. Add it to your MCP client

Claude Code (use the absolute path to the built file):

claude mcp add after-effects -e AFTERAI_API_KEY=ak_your_key -- node /absolute/path/to/after-effects-mcp/dist/index.js

Claude Desktop / Cursor — add to your MCP config (claude_desktop_config.json or .cursor/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "after-effects": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/after-effects-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "AFTERAI_API_KEY": "ak_your_key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Coming soon: a published npm package so you can run it with npx -y after-effects-mcp instead of cloning.

4. Use it

"Edit this clip with a cinematic color grade and subtitles: https://drive.google.com/…"

Claude calls edit_video, then you can ask it to check_status until the download link appears.

Configuration

edit_video options

Run from source

git clone https://github.com/borishalachev1/after-effects-mcp.git
cd after-effects-mcp
npm install
npm run build
AFTERAI_API_KEY=ak_your_key node dist/index.js

How it works

This MCP server is a thin client over afterAI's public automation API (POST /api/v1/order). afterAI runs the actual After Effects pipeline (Topaz upscaling, color grade, Whisper subtitles, beat detection, render) and delivers the finished file.

License

MIT © afterAI