Surehand MCP for Adobe After Effects

Surehand MCP lets the AI app you already use work inside Adobe® After Effects®, and shows you what it did. It is for motion designers, finishing artists and technical directors who can't deliver on "the AI says it's done". Every edit is one undo step and comes back with an exact list of what changed. Structural changes come with pixel proof that the picture didn't change. Deliveries are checked against your own spec, templates are pushed through worst-case inputs, and every version built from data is checked row by row. Verified, not trusted.

• AI apps: Claude (Desktop and Code), ChatGPT (desktop app and web), Codex, Cursor, VS Code (GitHub Copilot), Windsurf / Devin Desktop, LM Studio, or any MCP client. Inside After Effects, the Surehand panel can also chat through Codex, Claude Code or Antigravity on your own sign-in.
• After Effects: 2025 and 2026 on macOS and Windows, in any language, are tested release by release. The extension loads in CC 2019 (16.0) and newer; versions before 2025 are best effort.
• Install: signed and notarized .pkg for Mac, signed Setup.exe for Windows. No administrator rights, no account. Free and open source (MIT).
• Website and downloads: conformlabs.co/surehand.

It doesn't generate images and ships no presets or canned looks. It works on your project, by your rules, and measures the result.

AI app ──MCP──> surehand-ae server (Node, on your computer) ──localhost──> Surehand panel (CEP, inside After Effects) ──> ExtendScript

See it work

Four short demos, recorded on Surehand 1.4.1 and After Effects 2026. Long waits are cut and marked on screen; nothing is sped up. All four as a playlist, or on conformlabs.co/surehand.

• Precomp surgery: Claude un-precomposes a comp, keeps every expression working and proves the picture didn't change (16 frames, zero difference).
• Preflight: a comp checked against the client's delivery spec finds 5 problems, each with a timecode, then one is fixed and checked again.
• Stress test: a lower-third template with long German names, Arabic, Hebrew and huge numbers; 28 of 33 variants break, and the original comp is confirmed unchanged.
• Farm render: a render split across 4 aerender processes, and every one of the 250 frames verified.

What you can ask it

Real requests, in your words. The AI picks the tool; the tool does the measuring.

Everyday edits work the same way: comps, layers, keyframes at Graph Editor precision, expressions, effects, text, masks, 3D, audio, footage, Essential Graphics and render settings, plus any After Effects script when no tool fits. See the full tool list.

Install

[Download the latest release](https://github.com/ConformLabs/surehand-mcp/releases/latest)

Nothing else is needed: the .pkg and Setup.exe include Node.js 24, the .mcpb uses Claude Desktop's built-in Node.js, and the zip's installer downloads Node.js if it is missing.

Step-by-step setup guides for each AI app: Claude, ChatGPT and Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, LM Studio.

Mac and Windows installers

1. Mac: double-click Surehand-MCP- .pkg and follow the steps. No administrator password: everything goes into your own home folder. Windows: run Surehand-MCP-Setup- .exe. It installs per user, with no administrator rights.
2. Restart After Effects once.
3. Restart the AI apps that were open during the install.

Both installers put a private Node.js 24, the server and the After Effects extension on your computer, connect the AI apps they find, and write the Surehand skills for them (see The installer).

First run

The bridge starts with After Effects; nothing needs to be opened. To see it, open Window > Extensions > Surehand MCP. A green dot means connected. The panel shows the latest calls, the permission mode and Pause AI.

Then ask your AI app something simple:

*"Check After Effects is connected, then make a 1080p comp with an animated title and show me frame 1."*

If something is off, the panel's ☰ › Test the connection (or surehand-ae selftest) says what and how to fix it.

Claude Desktop only (.mcpb)

Double-click Surehand-MCP.mcpb and click Install in Claude Desktop, then restart After Effects once. On first start the server installs its After Effects extension by itself. Use either the .mcpb or an installer for Claude Desktop, not both.

The zip

The same installer as double-click scripts, for setups the installers don't cover:

Surehand-MCP/

START HERE.txt

1. Claude Desktop (easiest)/ Surehand-MCP.mcpb
2. Mac/ 1. Install, 2. Test Installation, 3. Connect ChatGPT, 4. Uninstall (.command)
3. Windows/ 1. Install, 2. Test Installation, 3. Connect ChatGPT, 4. Uninstall (.bat) Support files/ run.sh, run.ps1, surehand-ae.mjs, this README

Double-click 1. Install in 2. Mac or 3. Windows, then restart After Effects once. With After Effects open, 2. Test Installation checks everything. START HERE.txt (from installer/START HERE.txt) has the same steps in plain language, including what to do if macOS Gatekeeper or Windows SmartScreen blocks the files.

The installer

What every installer (.pkg, Setup.exe, or 1. Install from the zip) does:

• uses the private Node.js 24 that the .pkg / Setup.exe put in ~/.surehand/node; the zip's scripts use the Node.js on your PATH, or download a private Node.js 22 LTS into ~/.surehand/node (checksum-verified)
• copies the MCP server to ~/.surehand/ae/server/surehand-ae.mjs (one self-contained file)
• installs the After Effects extension into your user CEP extensions folder. The extension is signed, so it loads without enabling unsigned extensions (PlayerDebugMode)
• creates ~/.surehand/ae/config.json with a random access token
• registers the server, under the name surehand-ae, with the AI apps it finds: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT desktop / Codex (~/.codex/config.toml, created if the ChatGPT or Codex app is installed), Cursor, VS Code (its user mcp.json, used by GitHub Copilot's Agent mode), Windsurf / Devin Desktop (~/.config/devin/mcp_config.json, %APPDATA%\devin on Windows, and Windsurf's ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json while that folder is there) and LM Studio (~/.lmstudio/mcp.json). Before a config file is changed, a timestamped backup is made next to it (*.surehand- .bak, the newest three are kept); the very first original also stays as *.surehand.bak. If Claude Desktop is open it offers to restart it, because a running Claude Desktop overwrites its config file
• writes the Surehand skills (see Skills) for the AI apps that read skill files, and the zips to upload in Claude Desktop chat

The server also checks the After Effects extension every time it starts and installs or updates it if needed.

To uninstall: double-click 4. Uninstall from the zip, or run surehand-ae uninstall (and remove the .mcpb in Claude Desktop > Settings > Extensions if you used it). Checkpoints are kept unless you pass --all.

Skills

Four Agent Skills teach the AI how to work with Surehand well:

• surehand-ae: the basics. Check the connection, read before editing, confirm each edit with its change report, look at the result, never work around a refusal, plus the ExtendScript traps seen live.
• surehand-ae-delivery: preflight against your own delivery spec, stress tests, versions from data checked row by row, the localization round trip, farm renders.
• surehand-ae-safe-restructure: structural edits and render speed-ups with pixel proof.
• surehand-ae-timing-layout: exact keyframes, easing, measured alignment and reformats.

The source is skills/ in this repo.

• The installer writes them to ~/.claude/skills/ (Claude Code; Cursor and VS Code read it too) and ~/.agents/skills/ (ChatGPT desktop / Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf / Devin Desktop); %USERPROFILE% on Windows. A folder is written only when one of those apps is on the computer (or the folder is there already). Only the four surehand-ae* folders are written, replaced on update and removed on uninstall; other skills are never touched.
• For Claude Desktop chat: upload the skills in Customize › Skills › Upload a skill (files in ~/.surehand/ae/skills, one zip per skill). claude.ai takes the s