MCP Panel
The MCP panel connects your AI client to the live composition and runs its requests as native After Effects work — what it does and how to use it.
The MCP panel is where your AI does its work. Connect any MCP-compatible AI client — Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Windsurf, and more — and it reads your live composition and writes back real keyframes and layers, not a script.
This is one of the three tabs in the Prism panel — MCP — alongside the JSON tab and the Tools tab. You drive it with a plain-language prompt to your connected AI client, which reads the active composition and builds in it directly. It runs in After Effects 2024, 2025, and 2026 — see compatibility.
Set it up
What the panel can do
Each area is a set of capabilities you drive straight from a prompt:
- Animation & keyframes — real, eased keyframes at real frames.
- Lifelike motion — Disney principles, spring physics, and named eases.
- Working with layers — create, order, parent, and style layers.
- Compositions — build and nest comps.
- Effects & presets — apply and configure effects.
- Expressions — when an expression is the right tool.
- Timeline & markers — retime layers and place markers.
Every change is reversible — a single undo plus a restore point before anything destructive, and your project files stay on your machine.
Related
- Connect your AI client — copy your personal Prism MCP URL and start sending requests.
- Your first prompts — see the panel read and write a comp.
- The JSON panel — edit an entire project as one file.
- The Tools panel — the nine one-click tools.
Use cases
Real-world ways designers and studios use Prism — caption a video, cut to the beat, animate a logo from an SVG, re-skin a template to a brand, heal a handed-off project, and more.
Animation
Ask for animation in plain language and Prism writes real After Effects keyframes at real frames with editable easing, anticipation, and overshoot — all undoable.