a-y-ibrahim/after-effects-mcp

Control Adobe After Effects from any MCP client (Claude Code / Claude Desktop) using natural
language: create and inspect comps and layers, animate, apply effects and presets, manage
masks/cameras, **render in the background**, and run arbitrary ExtendScript - with **first‑class
Arabic / RTL support** and tools that work on After Effects in **any UI language**.
This is an enhanced edition built on the original work of
**Dakkshin/after-effects-mcp**. See CREDITS.md.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/af6419bd-5854-46f7-a0ba-49231697eb18
_Built and rendered end to end from a single prompt, no manual keyframing._
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✨ Why this edition
| Area | This edition |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Works in any AE language** | All standard property lookups use locale‑independent matchNames → no breakage on Arabic/French/German/Japanese AE |
| **Arabic / RTL text** | create-text-layer auto‑detects Arabic, sets right‑to‑left direction and right alignment |
| **Arbitrary scripting** | execute-script runs any ExtendScript → reach every AE feature |
| **Visual feedback** | see-frame renders a frame back as an image so the AI can SEE its work and self-correct (no other AE MCP does this) |
| **Deep inspection** | inspect-comp / inspect-layer - see exact state before editing |
| **Rendering** | In‑app render queue **and** background aerender (no UI freeze) |
| **Reliability** | Per‑command IDs (no stale results), one undo group per command, faster polling, OneDrive‑proof shared folder, check-bridge health/version check |
| **Layer management** | Cameras, duplicate, delete, masks, batch transform, comp settings - as dedicated tools |
**57 tools total.** Full details in ENHANCEMENTS.md.
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📋 Prerequisites
- **Adobe After Effects** 2022 or later
- **Windows or macOS.** After Effects itself only runs on these two platforms, so
the server is meant to run on the same machine as After Effects. The Node
process starts on Linux and the CI builds and tests there, but there is no After
Effects for it to drive.
- **Node.js 18+** -
- An MCP client (e.g. **Claude Code**: npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code)
🚀 Setup
Then in After Effects:
1. Enable scripting - **Windows**: Edit > Preferences > Scripting & Expressions; **macOS**: After Effects > Settings > Scripting & Expressions → enable **“Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network”**.
2. Restart After Effects.
3. **Window > mcp-bridge-auto.jsx** - keep this panel open.
Register the server with your MCP client:
**First test:** ask your client to _“check the After Effects bridge”_. It should report
bridgeVersion: 1.13.0-mcp-enhanced and versionMatch: true.
> 💡 If you edit the server, re‑run npm run build, then restart the MCP client.
> If you edit the bridge, also re‑run npm run install-bridge and restart After Effects.
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🧰 Tools at a glance
**Inspection & diagnostics** - see-frame, contact-sheet, match-reference, inspect-comp, inspect-layer, get-results, check-bridge, run-bridge-test, get-help