What an AI agent can do inside After Effects
An AI agent works inside the composition you have open. It works through Prism, an MCP server for Adobe After Effects, and what it leaves behind is your project. You talk to the agent in your own AI client. There is no chat box inside After Effects; the panel only executes.
| It reads | Your live comp: real layer names, real timing, real frame rate |
| It writes | Native layers and keyframes, straight into the timeline |
| It sees | Rendered frames, inline, so it can check its own work |
| It leaves | Your project, editable without Prism afterwards. See real keyframes |
| You undo it | One step in After Effects history, and a checkpoint of the whole project whenever you ask for one |
The loop
The fourth step is what changes the quality of the output: an agent that sees the frame it just rendered catches its own mistakes.
What it handles well
These passes are mechanical. That is why they suit an agent, and why so many hours go into them.
| Pass | What that means |
|---|---|
| Timing and rhythm | Retime a sequence, stagger layers by a fixed offset, snap animation to detected beats (Prism AI, Pro). See timeline |
| Repeated structure | Rebuild the same arrangement across comps, parent a set to a null, rename a messy stack. See layers |
| Motion quality | Ease consistently, add follow-through and overlap, give a linear draft weight. See motion |
| Design coming in | SVG arrives as real text and real shapes, not outlines |
| Generative media | Transcription, beats, sound, music, images and video from Prism AI, on Pro, charged per use from a prepaid balance starting at $5 |
What it does not do
| Art direction | What should feel heavy and what should feel quick is not a mechanical decision. A model guessing at it produces work that is technically correct and creatively dead |
| The brief | If the shot is wrong, doing it faster makes the wrong shot faster |
| Anything you cannot describe | If you cannot say what you want in a sentence, the bottleneck is not the software |
The gain is not that an agent makes the piece. It is that the hours of naming, parenting and retiming stop being hours.
Where the work happens
Every tool and all the logic live on the server, and the panel inside After Effects runs one instruction, returns the result, and has to be open. See how it works.
What it needs
| After Effects | 2024, 2025 or 2026, on macOS or Windows |
| An AI client | Any client that speaks MCP, on the subscription you already pay for |
| One address | https://live.oneprism.io/after-effects, identical for everyone and holding no secret |
| A key | No There is no licence key and no API key. You sign in through your browser |
Try it
- "Tell me about my current composition."
- "Stagger these twelve layers by two frames and ease them out."
- "Look at this comp and tell me what is wrong with the timing."
More in your first prompts.