effectcraft
Open-source After Effects rebuilt in Rust, with an MCP server so agents can drive it too.
EffectCraft is an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of After Effects in Rust — same panel layout, same keyframe behavior (Bezier, Easy Ease, roving keys, Graph Editor), 306 effects, 3D cameras and lights, and a render queue, running natively on macOS, Windows and Linux plus the browser. Project files are versioned JSON (.ecproj) so they diff cleanly in git, and every action — menu item, timeline drag, property edit — goes through one command registry reachable from the CLI, a JSON control channel, or an MCP server built for AI agents. It decodes and encodes video and audio with its own pure-Rust codecs, including its own VP9, AV1, HEVC and Opus encoders, so there's no FFmpeg dependency.
What holds up
- +Open source and free, unlike the proprietary software it's rebuilding
- +Project files are versioned JSON that diff cleanly in git, not opaque binaries
- +Ships an MCP server, so AI agents can drive the same commands a human uses
- +No FFmpeg dependency — codecs including its own AV1 and HEVC encoders are pure Rust
Mind the limits
- −Young and moving fast by its own description — expect rough edges versus mature tools
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