After Effects MCP for Claude

Let Claude work directly inside your open Adobe After Effects: inspect the project, build comps, animate, add effects, look at real frames, compare your comp side by side with a reference video, measure a reference's camera moves and copy them, and render. All of it happens by talking to Claude.

Built and battle-tested on real lyric-video and title-sequence builds in After Effects 2026.

You:    "Make a 10 s comp with a big red title that slams in on the beat, then show me."
Claude: ae_create_comp -> ae_add_layer -> ae_set_property -> ae_preview  (and looks at the frames)

Features

• 23 tools: comps, layers, properties, keyframes with easing, expressions, effects, import, save, render.

• Live preview: ae_preview renders frames straight from the open project, with no saving or rendering.

• Side-by-side compare: ae_compare shows a reference frame next to your live comp frame at the same moment.

• Camera move capture: ae_measure_motion tracks a reference video shot by shot (pan, zoom, rotation, shake). ae_camera_move recreates the move as eased keyframes with auto-overscan.

• Shot timing: ae_cuts finds the cut times. ae_detect_beats finds the BPM, kicks and onsets of a song.

• Cutouts: ae_cutout cuts people out of photos for text-behind-subject and parallax shots.

• No popups: every script runs sandboxed in try/catch with dialogs suppressed. Errors come back to Claude as text instead of freezing After Effects. Each action is one undo step.

• Built-in playbook: ae_guide covers workflow, ExtendScript gotchas, look recipes and quality rules.

Related MCP server: AfterEffectsMCP

Requirements

• Windows, with Adobe After Effects 2022 or newer

• Python 3.10+ (python.org, tick "Add python.exe to PATH")

• Claude Code (desktop app Code tab or CLI), or Claude Desktop

• Optional: ffmpeg (winget install Gyan.FFmpeg) for video references and render contact sheets

Install

Option A: one click

1. Download this repo: Code > Download ZIP and unzip it (for example to C:\Tools\after-effects-mcp), or

   git clone https://github.com/teamturmericmedia-byte/after-effects-mcp.git

2. Double-click install.bat. It installs the Python helpers and registers the server with Claude Code.

3. In After Effects, go to Edit > Preferences > Scripting & Expressions, tick Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network, then restart After Effects.

4. Open After Effects, start a new Claude session and say: "check After Effects". Allow the after-effects tools.

Option B: manual

python -m pip install --user -r requirements.txt
claude mcp add after-effects --scope user -- python "C:\Tools\after-effects-mcp\server.py"

Or add it to a config file yourself: ~/.claude.json or a project's .mcp.json for Claude Code, or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json for Claude Desktop.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "after-effects": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["C:\\Tools\\after-effects-mcp\\server.py"]
    }
  }
}

If After Effects is installed in an unusual place, add "env": { "AE_PATH": "D:\\...\\Support Files\\AfterFX.exe" }.

Then do step 3 from Option A (allow scripts in After Effects).

Tools

Tutorial: talk to it like a motion designer

1. "Check After Effects" shows what's open.

2. "Make a 1080p 10 s comp called INTRO, dark navy background, big red Anton title that slams in."

3. "Show me" returns live frames. Then: "Title too small, move it up, add a glow."

4. "Recreate 0:44-1:10 of this video with my photos: ". Claude studies the reference, measures its cuts and camera moves, builds the comp, then uses ae_compare to tune colour, framing and timing side by side.

5. "Render it" gives you an MP4 with a contact sheet.

How it works

Plain Python with no extra dependencies for the server itself. It speaks MCP over stdio and drives the running After Effects by sending ExtendScript through AfterFX.exe -r from a space-free temp folder, then reads the JSON result back. prelude.jsx adds helpers (comp(), layer(), prop(), fx(), setKeys(), a JSON encoder for ES3). audit_tools.py holds the measuring code (cuts, camera motion via ORB feature tracking, colour, side-by-side sheets) and also works standalone: python audit_tools.py motion reference.mp4. cli.py calls any tool from a terminal: python cli.py ae_status.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.