after-effects-scripting

after-effects-scripting is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Maciejdziuba/youtube-skills. It costs 148 tokens per session (1,577 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A shell-based way to control an open Adobe After Effects project using scripts. It can build, edit, and render motion-graphics work without installing an MCP server, plugin, or panel.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for animations, title sequences, logo introductions, product or interface motion, data visualisations, and fixes to existing After Effects projects.
Why use it?
It lets a coding agent work directly in After Effects while keeping the control path in the terminal.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths.

Good fit Use it for animations, title sequences, logo introductions, product or interface motion, data visualisations, and fixes to existing After Effects projects.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/maciejdziuba/youtube-skills/after-effects-scripting
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add Maciejdziuba/youtube-skills --skill after-effects-scripting
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Maciejdziuba/youtube-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for after-effects-scripting

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/maciejdziuba/youtube-skills/after-effects-scripting/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/maciejdziuba/youtube-skills/after-effects-scripting)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/maciejdziuba/youtube-skills/after-effects-scripting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/maciejdziuba/youtube-skills/after-effects-scripting/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for after-effects-scripting

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/maciejdziuba/youtube-skills/after-effects-scripting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/maciejdziuba/youtube-skills/after-effects-scripting.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 148 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,577 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00148 $0.01577
Opus 5 $0.00074 $0.00788
Sonnet 5 $0.00030 $0.00315
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00158

Measured 11d ago against content hash 7e0413d2bcaf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

after-effects-scripting scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/ae-run.sh, scripts/contact_sheet.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

after-effects-scripting/SKILL.md · 127 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 127 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

After Effects, driven from the shell

After Effects exposes an AppleScript command, DoScript, that runs ExtendScript inside the live application. That is the whole bridge. Nothing is installed, no MCP server, no CEP panel.

osascript -e 'tell application "Adobe After Effects 2026" to DoScript "$.evalFile(\"/tmp/ae/build.jsx\")"'

Before anything else

  1. After Effects must be open, with a project.
  2. Preferences → Scripting & Expressions → Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network must be on. Nothing works without it.
  3. macOS may need Automation permission for your terminal (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation).
  4. Confirm the bridge before building anything:
osascript -e 'tell application "Adobe After Effects 2026" to DoScript "var f=new File(\"/tmp/ae/ping.txt\"); f.open(\"w\"); f.write(\"alive \"+app.project.numItems); f.close();"'

Adjust the app name to the installed version. DoScript returning 1 instead of 0 means AE is busy or blocked by a modal dialog — see When it looks hung.

The loop — this is the skill

Never judge a change you have not looked at. The entire value of this workflow is that you can see your own output and fix it, instead of guessing from a description. One cycle:

  1. Write build.jsx — idempotent: it wipes and rebuilds the comp every run.
  2. Run it. Read err.txt and prog.txt.
  3. Render proof frames, stitch a contact sheet, open the image and look at it.
  4. Fix what you actually see. Repeat.

scripts/ae-run.sh does steps 2–3 in one command:

~/.claude/skills/after-effects-scripting/scripts/ae-run.sh /tmp/ae "MY COMP"

It prints BUILD: OK or the error with a line number, waits for AE to finish flushing PNGs to disk, and prints the path of a timestamped contact sheet. Read that image with your file-reading tool. Do not skip this step — every serious mistake in a build is invisible in the code and obvious in the frame.

Use the helper library

Read the full file on GitHub · 127 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 127 lines · 148 tokens per session scan A 7e0413d2bcaf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

after-effects-scripting is a skill published in the GitHub repository Maciejdziuba/youtube-skills (2 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 148 tokens to every session and 1,577 once invoked, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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