FAQ
Short answers to the questions that come up most before and after you connect Prism to After Effects. For the full setup, see before you start.
Yes. Prism connects to the AI you already pay for, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Kimi, Qwen and any other client that speaks MCP. A free plan works wherever the client lets you add a custom MCP server: Claude's Free plan allows one, and OpenAI lists MCP in the ChatGPT desktop app and Codex from Plus up. You paste one address into your client and sign in through your browser, and your project context stays in the assistant you already use rather than starting over in a second window.
No, and no. You keep the plan you already pay for, and Prism issues no API keys on any plan. That is why Pro is a flat $6 rather than a share of your model spend: Prism sells the connection and the After Effects craft, and takes nothing for the model that drives it.
No. Your project files stay on your machine; only the specific action you request round-trips to the server. See how Prism works.
Yes. You bring your own AI client and subscription, and Prism takes nothing for the model that drives it. See bring your own AI.
When you ask for subtitles or beat markers, the audio is sent to the server, and only the result (timestamped text or timeline markers) returns to your project. Each run spends your AI balance; see usage and limits.
Your plan belongs to you rather than to a machine, so sign in on a studio desktop and a laptop and both work, on macOS or Windows. There are no device slots to free. See signing in.
When you cancel, your subscription returns to the Free plan at the end of the period. The panel keeps working with Free plan limits, and you stay signed in. You can resume a paid plan anytime from your dashboard.
Any MCP-compatible AI client: Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Windsurf, and more; see the supported clients. For the per-client connection steps, see connect Claude to After Effects.
The Free plan is $0 and needs no card: every tool, with a monthly cap on how much you run. Pro is $6 a month, or $60 a year, and lifts the cap from 100 MCP actions a month to unlimited MCP actions. You buy it from your dashboard once you have signed up. Both plans work on every machine you sign in on. See plans and pricing.
No, and they are different things. Your AI client is the reasoning AI you already pay for, and Prism never bills you for it. Prism AI is the narrow set of media features we generate for you (subtitles, beat markers, images, sound effects, music and video), and those cost real money to produce, so they are paid from a prepaid balance held in dollars.
Prism AI is a Pro feature: a Free account gets 100 MCP actions a month and the full toolset, and the generative services begin at Pro. The balance itself is load-to-use rather than part of the plan: you buy a pack ($5, $10, $25, $50 or $100) whenever you want, what you buy is what you have, and it never expires. There is no second unit and nothing to convert.
Pay as you go. Transcription is charged per minute of audio, beat detection per analysis, sound effects per generation, music per minute, images per image and video per clip, with image and video rates varying by model. Every generation is charged per result, so you pay for what you make and nothing else.
The current rate for each tool is in your dashboard. Prices are stated in one place on purpose: the figures there come from the same code that bills you, so what you read and what you are charged cannot disagree. See also usage and limits.
No. A plugin is a frozen file on your disk that goes stale the day After Effects updates. Prism is an MCP server plus a thin panel: the tools live on the server, so new capability arrives without a reinstall. See how Prism works.
Real keyframes. Native layers, native shapes, native text, on real frames, with real easing you can grab and change by hand. Nothing arrives flattened. See real keyframes, not scripts.
Yes. Every action lands as one step in After Effects history, so a single undo reverts it. Before anything that removes work, ask for a checkpoint and it saves a timestamped copy of your project first.
No. What you send runs your request and is then discarded. Nothing you make is used to train a model, and your projects are never stored on our servers. The full ledger of what moves is on the security page.
Adobe announced a public beta of its AI Assistant on 8 September 2026; it runs in the After Effects beta app. Prism is a different route: the AI client you already use, such as Claude or ChatGPT, reads your open comp and builds in it. How the two compare.
Yes, once Claude is connected through Prism. Describe the piece and it lands in your open comp as layers and keyframes you can still change by hand or by asking again. Prompts and steps are on motion graphics with Claude.
Yes. Some run on your own computer and some are hosted and reached by an address, as Prism is. After Effects MCP servers compared sets them side by side from what each project documents, with the date the facts were checked.
After Effects 2024, 2025 and 2026, on macOS and Windows. See compatibility.