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Progress docs: target-app parity, gaps, alpha gate, readiness by audience (#617)

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Progress docs per craftrules standards/progress-docs.md: target-app parity, gaps, roadmap with alpha gate, readiness by audience (full / mainstream / essentials) with Opus 5.5 hours, and feature, format, hardware, UI and localization parity docs.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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docs/architecture.md
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# Architecture
> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-10 · **Change:** minor (crate table checked against `crates/`: effect count 306, VP9 inter frames) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026
EffectCraft is a stack of small Rust crates. The engine knows nothing about the user interface;
the egui frontend, the command-line tool and the MCP server all sit on top of the same `Session`
and drive it through the same command registry.
@@ -16,7 +18,7 @@ cpal or muda. Everything in L0 to L4, the egui UI and the web app also build for
| L0 | `time` | `Tick` (254 016 000 000 per second), rational frame rates incl. NTSC, SMPTE and drop-frame timecode |
| L0 | `geom` | Vectors, matrices, quaternions, the layer transform (anchor, position, scale, orientation, rotation) |
| L0 | `color` | sRGB and linear, HSL/HSV, luminance, the 38 blend modes, label colors |
| L0 | `vp9enc` | VP9 intra-frame encoder (profile 0, 8-bit 4:2:0; lossless at quality 100) for WebM export, from the VP9 bitstream specification |
| L0 | `vp9enc` | VP9 encoder (profile 0, 8-bit 4:2:0, key and inter frames with motion search, loop filter and rate control; lossless at quality 100) for WebM export, from the VP9 bitstream specification |
| L0 | `opusenc` | Opus encoder: RFC 6716 SILK (NB/MB/WB), hybrid (SWB/FB) and CELT (FB) modes chosen by bitrate and application (audio / voice), 48 kHz 20 ms packets, mono/stereo, and the RFC 7845 `OpusHead`, for WebM export audio |
| L0 | `hevcenc` | HEVC (H.265) encoder from ITU-T H.265: Main / Main 10 4:2:0, IDR + P slices (quarter-pel motion, merge/AMVP), CABAC, deblocking, bitrate or constant-QP rate control, for MP4 (`hvc1`) export |
| L0 | `av1enc` | AV1 encoder from the AV1 bitstream specification: Main profile 8/10-bit 4:2:0, key + inter frames (quarter-pel motion), deblocking, for MP4 (`av01`) and WebM export |
@@ -27,7 +29,7 @@ cpal or muda. Everything in L0 to L4, the egui UI and the web app also build for
| L1 | `path` | Bezier paths, path operators (trim, offset, round corners, zig zag, twist, merge…), stroking, coverage masks |
| L2 | `project` | The document: items, compositions, layers, the property tree, render queue model, `.ecproj` serde |
| L2 | `text` | Fonts, shaping, layout, per-glyph geometry, text animators and selectors |
| L2 | `effects` | The effect registry (241 effects) and their CPU implementations |
| L2 | `effects` | The effect registry (306 effects) and their CPU implementations |
| L2 | `svg` | SVG import (W3C SVG 1.1/2 static subset: shapes, paths, transforms, `use`, CSS, gradients) and rasterisation at any scale |
| L2 | `pdf` | PDF, PDF-compatible Illustrator (`.ai`) and EPS (PostScript subset) vector footage into the `svg` render tree: paths, fills, strokes, shadings, tiling patterns, clipping, text (embedded TrueType / CFF / Type 1 / Type 3 fonts; the bundled `text` fonts for the standard 14), images, blend modes, soft masks, optional-content layers |
| L2 | `model` | 3D models for Advanced 3D: glTF 2.0 (`.gltf`/`.glb`) and OBJ/MTL import (meshes, PBR metallic-roughness materials and textures, node hierarchy, skins, animations), parametric primitives, extruded/bevelled outline meshes and polygon triangulation |
@@ -675,3 +677,9 @@ The before frame times were dominated by an O(layers²) menu build per visible t
by every panel deep-cloning the active comp each frame. Left for later: per-layer structural
sharing (so a one-layer edit doesn't copy its comp), a binary or compact project format (pretty
JSON parsing is now the bulk of open), and rendering 5,000-layer comps faster.
## Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Status line added; crate table checked against `crates/` (every crate listed); effect count and VP9 encoder description corrected |
docs/effects-parity.md
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# Effects parity
> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-10 · **Change:** major (first effects parity checklist: presence, GPU, fidelity and presets against After Effects 2026 26.5) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026
Effects are the deepest single area of After Effects. This page separates the four questions
that a single "306 of 306" hides: does each effect exist, does it run fast, does it look like
After Effects', and does the preset library exist. The per-effect catalogue is the generated
[effects.md](effects.md); the overall numbers are in [target-app-parity.md](target-app-parity.md).
## Summary
| Question | Value | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Effects present | **306** registered, 3,014 parameters; all of After Effects' effects by name (298 at the M9.11 count) plus Obsolete and our own | Measured: registry, [effects.md](effects.md). After Effects 26.5's `Plug-ins/Effects` holds 306 `.plugin` bundles in 231 entries (one bundle can hold several effects, so this is a cross-check, not a match) |
| Parameter names, order, popups, units, defaults | aligned in M9.12 | Agent-checked against After Effects' documentation, not against a live dump |
| On the GPU | **280** (92%) | Measured: registry flags; GPU vs CPU agreement tested per effect |
| 32-bit float, no clamping | 306 | Measured: registry flags |
| **Rendered output matches After Effects** | **unmeasured** | No effect is compared with an After Effects render yet. `effectcraft_effects::fidelity::compare_frames` exists for the corpus ([fidelity/README.md](fidelity/README.md)); simulation effects are pinned by golden hashes of our own output (M13.27) |
| Animation presets | **8** original text-animator presets against After Effects' **621** `.ffx` presets | Measured: `crates/engine/presets/text_animators.json`; the After Effects `Presets` folder |
| 26.x additions | Curl Noise (26.3) present (#463 open); effect colour labels and the rebuilt Effect Controls (26.5) missing | Release notes |
**Breadth ≈ 85%** (presets weigh in; the effects themselves are ≈ 100%). **Ready ≈ 40%**: until a
corpus compares renders, each effect is assumed to differ somewhere, and users keep confirming it.
## By category (from [effects.md](effects.md))
| Category | Effects | On the GPU | Known differences or bugs |
|---|---:|---:|---|
| 3D Channel | 8 | 8 | Cryptomatte selection can't be set in the UI and the GPU path is slow (#473); multi-layer EXRs decoded twice (#474) |
| Audio | 13 | 0 | CPU by design (applied in the mixdown) |
| Blur & Sharpen | 16 | 15 | Gaussian Blur interaction and output to be measured first ([fidelity/ae-2026-acceptance.md](fidelity/ae-2026-acceptance.md)) |
| Channel | 13 | 13 | — |
| Color Correction | 40 | 40 | Apply Color LUT (#514); 32-bpc blending differences affect looks (#494); ACES 2.0 / OCIO 2.5 (26.5) |
| Distort | 39 | 35 | Mesh Warp can't be dragged in the viewer (#303); CC Power Pin Unstretch (#534, community fix pending); Liquify has no viewer brush |
| Expression Controls | 9 | 9 | — |
| Generate | 26 | 25 | Fractal on the CPU (needs f64), Reset doesn't work (#526); Write-on drops marks when animated (#536, fix pending) |
| Immersive Video | 12 | 12 | — |
| Keying | 12 | 12 | Key Cleaner approximated; wire-removal Frame Offset (#533, fix pending) |
| Matte | 6 | 4 | Mocha shape reads our documented JSON, not Mocha's format |
| Noise & Grain | 13 | 12 | Curl Noise (#463); Match Grain on the CPU |
| Obsolete | 9 | 9 | — |
| Paint | 1 | 0 | Tablet pressure not read ([hardware-parity.md](hardware-parity.md)) |
| Perspective | 10 | 9 | Chromatic Aberrations pan/tilt crash (#580) |
| Simulation | 18 | 18 | Particle Playground lacks Particle Exploder, text particles, ephemeral mapper; CC Particle World camera fixed (#397) |
| Stylize | 25 | 25 | Motion Tile output size (#369) |
| Text | 2 | 2 | — |
| Time | 8 | 8 | Pixel Motion Blur averages frames, ignores Vector Detail (#535, fix pending) |
| Transition | 17 | 17 | — |
| Utility | 9 | 7 | — |
Third-party bundles in After Effects (Cineware, Mocha AE) are out of scope; Keylight is
implemented under a generic name ("Key Light").
## Estimate
**≈ 70–130 h**: a fidelity corpus case per effect at default and one non-default setting, compared
with After Effects renders, and the fixes they turn up (40–80 h, most of it parallel, but every
reference render needs After Effects on the owner's Mac); an original preset library covering
After Effects' preset categories (Behaviors, Backgrounds, Shapes, Synthetics, Text, Transitions,
Image effects) 20–40 h; the open effect bugs 10–20 h. Moving Fractal and the analysis effects to
the GPU is performance, not parity.
## Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | major | First effects parity checklist |
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# File format parity
> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-10 · **Change:** major (first per-format table, measured against the After Effects 2026 26.5 bundle and this repository's import/export registries) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026
Every format After Effects reads or writes, with EffectCraft's support. After Effects' list comes
from its installed bundle (26.5.0.89: `Info.plist` `CFBundleDocumentTypes`, `Plug-ins/Format`,
`Resources/usd_plugins`) and its public documentation; ours from `crates/media/src/lib.rs`
(`STILL_EXTENSIONS`, `VIDEO_EXTENSIONS`, `MODEL_EXTENSIONS`, FilmCraft's `AUDIO_EXTENSIONS`),
`crates/engine/src/commands/file.rs` (`DATA_EXTENSIONS`) and `OutputFormat::ALL` in
`crates/project/src/render_queue.rs`. Video codecs come from FilmCraft's pure-Rust crates
([architecture.md](architecture.md)).
**Overall ≈ 50%** (estimated, weighted by use): modern delivery and interchange formats are
strong, but After Effects' own project, template and preset formats, which decide whether
existing work moves over, are 0%.
Fidelity key: **exact** (bit-exact or within a stated tolerance of a reference), **good** (round
trips and renders, checked by tests, not against After Effects), **partial** (named limitations),
**none**.
## After Effects' own formats
| Format | After Effects | EffectCraft read | Write | Fidelity / notes | Tested by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project `.aep` | R/W (native) | none | none | Main file format; needs an owner decision on clean-room scope (#190, #248: py-aep as an external converter). Blocks beta | — |
| XML project `.aepx` | R/W | none | none | Same decision as `.aep` | — |
| Templates `.aet` / `.aetx` | R/W | none | none | Own `.ectemplate` (Home ▸ Templates, Save as Template) | `templates.rs` tests |
| Motion Graphics template `.mogrt` | W (and R in Premiere) | none | none | Own `.ectemplate` Essential Graphics templates; FilmCraft rejects our `.fcgt` export (#611) | `essential.rs` tests |
| Animation preset `.ffx` | R/W, 621 bundled | none | none | Own JSON `.ecpreset`; `.ffx` is out of clean-room scope (AGENTS.md §2) | `animation.rs` tests |
| Render Settings / Output Module templates `.ars` / `.aom` | R/W | none | none | Templates are stored in the project and settings instead | `render_templates.rs` tests |
| Scripts `.jsx` | R (run) | yes | — | After Effects object model and ScriptUI ([scripting-parity.md](scripting-parity.md)) | `crates/script` tests |
| Binary scripts `.jsxbin` | R (run) | none | — | No public specification: out of scope | — |
| Motion graphics JSON `.mgjson` | R (data) | none | none | Media Browser lists it; import accepts only `.json` / `.csv` / `.tsv` data | — |
| Captions `.aecap`, graphics `.aegraphic` | R/W | none | none | — | — |
| Native `.ecproj` | — | yes | yes | Versioned JSON; schema migrations tested; absolute footage paths, no relinking (gap 18) | engine project tests |
## Footage: stills
| Format | After Effects | Read | Write | Fidelity / notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PNG | R/W | yes | yes (sequence) | good |
| JPEG | R/W | yes | yes (sequence) | good |
| TIFF | R/W | yes | yes (sequence) | good |
| OpenEXR (multi-layer, Cryptomatte) | R/W | yes | yes (32-bit sequence) | good; HTJ2K compression fails (#482); EXRs without an unnamed RGB layer decode twice (#474) |
| Photoshop PSD / PSB | R (footage, composition) / W (layers, sequence) | yes (layers, groups, masks, styles, smart objects) | Save Frame As ▸ Photoshop Layers; no Photoshop sequence output | good, from Adobe's published spec |
| Illustrator `.ai`, PDF, EPS | R | yes (vector, Continuously Rasterize, Create Shapes) | — | partial: no JPX / JBIG2 images, no Illustrator procset EPS |
| SVG | R | yes | — | good; pasting SVG/AI as shape layers (26.3) missing |
| GIF | R/W | yes | yes (animated) | good |
| BMP | R | yes | — | good |
| WebP | — | yes | — | beyond After Effects |
| Targa `.tga` | R/W | none | none | Media Browser lists it but import refuses (gap 17) |
| DPX / Cineon `.dpx` `.cin` | R/W | none | none | Same; common in film VFX |
| Radiance `.hdr` | R/W | none | none | Same |
| SGI, PICT, ElectricImage, RLA/RPF images | R | none | none | Legacy; RPF camera data import exists (`keys.rpfCameraImport`) |
| Camera Raw (DNG, CR3, NEF…) | R (Camera Raw) | none | none | LightCraft has decoders that could be shared |
| HEIF / AVIF | R (platform) | none | none | — |
## Footage: video and audio
| Format | After Effects | Read | Write | Fidelity / notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MP4 / MOV with H.264 | R/W | yes | yes (own encoder, + AAC) | decoder bit-exact on conformance streams (FilmCraft) |
| HEVC (H.265) | R/W | yes | yes (MP4 `hvc1`, Main / Main 10) | encoder bit-exact with ffmpeg's decode; no B-frames / SAO, larger files |
| AV1 | R | yes | yes (MP4 `av01`, WebM) | beyond After Effects' export; no B-frames / CDEF |
| Apple ProRes (422 family, 4444) | R/W | yes | yes | good; 4444 colour tag wrong (#340); no ProRes RAW |
| WebM / Matroska (VP9, AV1, Opus) | R (limited) | yes, incl. VP9 alpha | yes | beyond After Effects |
| MXF (OP1a / OP-Atom) | R/W | none (FilmCraft reads it; not wired) | none | Media Browser lists it |
| AVI | R | none | none | Media Browser lists it |
| DNxHD / DNxHR | R/W | unverified (FilmCraft decodes it; reachable only inside `.mov`) | none | — |
| BRAW, R3D, ARRIRAW | R (plug-ins / SDKs) | none | none | proprietary SDKs |
| Variable-frame-rate phone video | R | unverified | — | needs a real-media corpus |
| WAV, AIFF | R/W | yes | yes (16-bit PCM) | good |
| MP3, AAC / M4A, FLAC, Ogg, Opus | R | yes | AAC and Opus inside video only | MP3 layer can go silent (#324) |
## 3D models
| Format | After Effects 26 | Read | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| glTF / GLB | R | yes (meshes, PBR, skins, animations) | good |
| OBJ / MTL | R | yes | good |
| FBX | R (`usdFbx`) | none | gap 13 |
| USD / USDZ | R (`usd_plugins`) | none | gap 13 |
| STL | R (`usdStl`) | none | gap 13 |
| Substance 3D materials `.sbsar` | R (26.0) | none | gap 13 |
## Interchange and data
| Format | After Effects | Read | Write | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premiere Pro `.prproj` | R (import) | none | none | Out of clean-room scope pending a decision; we interchange through FCP7 XML, FCPXML, OTIO, EDL, AAF and OMF instead (beyond After Effects) |
| Lottie JSON / dotLottie | via third-party plug-ins | yes | yes | beyond After Effects; a warnings list names what Lottie can't express |
| JSON / CSV / TSV data | R | yes (`footage()`, data layers) | — | good |
| LUTs (`.cube`, `.3dl`, `.csp`, `.spi1d/3d`, CDL) | R | yes (Apply Color LUT, OCIO effects) | — | Apply Color LUT bug (#514) |
| OpenColorIO configs | R (OCIO 2.5.1, ACES 2.0 in 26.5) | yes (OCIO v2 subset, Blender configs) | — | partial: no ACES 2.0 output transforms |
| Fonts (TTF, OTF, TTC, variable) | R | yes | — | good |
| Mocha shapes | R (Mocha AE) | own documented JSON | — | Mocha's format is not public |
| Vanishing Point `.vpe` | R | none | — | no public specification; the menu entry explains why |
## Render queue outputs (`OutputFormat::ALL`, 12)
H.264 MP4, HEVC MP4, AV1 MP4, ProRes MOV, WebM (VP9 or AV1 + Opus), PNG / JPEG / TIFF / OpenEXR
sequences, animated GIF, WAV, AIFF. Missing against After Effects + Media Encoder: uncompressed
or lossless single-file video (#372), DPX / Targa / Photoshop sequences, MXF, DNxHR, hardware
encoders ([hardware-parity.md](hardware-parity.md)), and rendering safely over an existing file
(#325).
## Estimate
**≈ 130–230 h**: `.aep` / `.aepx` import 80–160 h (after the owner decision), wiring TGA / DPX /
HDR / MXF / AVI / DNx import and DPX/TGA output 10–20 h, FBX / USD / STL and Substance 25–45 h,
relinking 6–12 h, `.mogrt`-compatible templates 15–30 h (partly parallel with the rest).
## Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | major | First file format parity document, from the After Effects 26.5 bundle and this repository's import/export registries |
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# Hardware parity
> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-10 · **Change:** major (first hardware parity document, from the code and open issues against After Effects 2026 26.5) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026
Each piece of hardware After Effects uses, per platform, against EffectCraft. Ours comes from the
code at `origin/main` 1446e27 (`crates/gpu`, `crates/render`, `crates/ui-egui`) and the issue
tracker; After Effects' from its documentation (Mercury GPU Acceleration, Multi-Frame Rendering,
hardware-accelerated decode and encode, Mercury Transmit) and its bundle.
**Overall ≈ 40%** (estimated). The GPU compositor and 280 GPU effects are a real strength and run
in the browser too; hardware video decode and encode, video-out devices, tablets and multiple
monitors are missing, and two GPU start-up failures are open.
| Feature | After Effects 2026 | EffectCraft macOS | Windows | Linux | Web | Notes / evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU compositing and effects | Mercury GPU (Metal; CUDA / OpenCL / DirectX on Windows) | yes, Metal via wgpu | Vulkan yes; **Direct3D 12 fails** (FXC can't compile the `pointwise` kernel, #613) | Vulkan | WebGPU, in frame workers | 280 of 306 effects on the GPU, checked against the CPU renderer; Fractal and the analysis/tool effects stay on the CPU ([effects-parity.md](effects-parity.md)) |
| CPU fallback and device-loss recovery | yes | yes | yes; Windows ARM64 Adreno panics after device loss (#591) | yes | yes (#225 fixed) | Out of video memory falls back to the CPU (#106) |
| GPU detection and choice | GPU info, renderer choice | Backend Auto per comp | "GPU isn't being detected" (#596); Intel HD 5500 fix unverified (#198) | yes | yes | No settings page listing adapters yet |
| Multi-core rendering | Multi-Frame Rendering | rayon pools; preview scheduler sized to the render pool | same | same | Web Workers, one engine per worker | No benchmark against Multi-Frame Rendering |
| Hardware video decode | H.264 / HEVC / ProRes (Apple silicon) | none (software, FilmCraft) | none | none | none | FilmCraft has VideoToolbox, Media Foundation/DXVA and VA-API paths to borrow (gap 15) |
| Hardware video encode | H.264 / HEVC via VideoToolbox, NVENC, Quick Sync (render queue and Media Encoder) | none | none | none | none | #498 asks for NVENC; our software encoders are slower and lack B-frames |
| Video output devices | Mercury Transmit to AJA, Blackmagic, second display | second preview window only (Video Preview) | same | same | — | No SDI/HDMI device output |
| HDR display | HDR monitoring on EDR / HDR displays | tone-mapped SDR view; no EDR output | no HDR output | no | no | Colour engine handles HDR maths (Rec. 2100 PQ/HLG output files) |
| Pen tablets (pressure, tilt) | yes, for Paint and Roto | Brushes panel has pressure options, but no tablet pressure is read | same | same | same | Paint strokes store pressure per vertex; input never fills it |
| Multiple monitors | panels and windows across screens | floating panels within one window only | same | same (#486) | — | gap 20 |
| Touch / trackpad gestures | pinch zoom in viewers | egui pointer and scroll; no pinch-to-zoom audited | — | — | — | — |
| Audio hardware | Core Audio / ASIO / WASAPI, device choice, latency | cpal output; preview sound late on Linux (#554) and after a start offset (#504) | cpal | cpal (ALSA) | Web Audio | No input or device latency settings |
| Machine learning acceleration | Apple Neural Engine / GPU for Object Matte, Roto Brush 3 | CPU inference (pure Rust, rayon) | CPU | CPU | CPU | No GPU inference for MobileSAM or MediaPipe |
| Memory management | RAM reserve, disk cache | RAM Reserved, Reduce Cache When Low on Memory, disk cache | same | same | OPFS disk cache | good |
## Estimate
**≈ 60–120 h**: Direct3D 12 and adapter start-up fixes 6–12 h; hardware decode on three platforms
20–35 h and encode 15–30 h (borrowing FilmCraft's work); multiple monitors 10–20 h; tablet pressure
4–8 h; HDR output 8–15 h. Needs Windows and Linux GPUs we don't have locally, and a human for
the Adreno and Intel cases.
## Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | major | First hardware parity document |
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# Localization parity
> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-10 · **Change:** major (first measurement of every catalog against the After Effects 2026 26.5 language set) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026
How much of EffectCraft's interface is translated, language by language, compared with After
Effects. [gaps.md](gaps.md) gap 16 and workstream G9 hold the work;
[target-app-parity.md](target-app-parity.md) the overall numbers.
## What After Effects ships
The installed After Effects 2026 (26.5.0.89) bundle has 11 `.lproj` localisations: English,
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Simplified
Chinese (`zh_CN`) and Traditional Chinese (`zh_TW`). Each translates the whole interface,
including effect names and parameters. It ships no Hindi, Arabic, Indonesian or Vietnamese
interface; Arabic and Hebrew text *in layers* is supported through its Middle Eastern text engine.
## How EffectCraft translates
- **Menus:** `crates/ui-egui/src/i18n.rs`, one catalog per language keyed by
`(command, English label)`. A test (`every_translation_key_exists_in_the_actual_menu_tree`)
fails if any fixed menu entry is untranslated or a row is stale, so every catalog covers all
**618** fixed entries. The generated Effect menu (effect names) is deliberately left in English.
- **Panels, dialogs, buttons, tooltips:** `crates/ui-egui/src/i18n/ui.rs`, keyed by the English
source string, with English fallback. Catalogs exist for Japanese, Simplified and Traditional
Chinese and Ukrainian.
- **Not translated anywhere yet:** effect names and their ≈ 1,650 parameter names
(`crates/effects`), engine-generated text (property names, errors, undo labels), the Home
screen's unwrapped literals (#574), Learn tutorials and documentation.
- **Language choice:** Settings ▸ General ▸ Language, or Match System
(`match_system_uses_the_system_language_where_there_is_a_catalog`).
- **Fonts:** no bundled CJK font; the UI installs system fallbacks probed by script (Kana, Han,
Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam,
Thai: `crates/ui-egui/src/theme.rs`). There is no Hangul probe, so Korean renders as boxes on
macOS (#599). The web build has no system fonts.
- **Script support in the interface:** egui draws text without complex shaping or right-to-left
layout, so an Arabic or Hindi interface would render unshaped and left to right. **In text
layers** (`crates/text`) shaping (harfrust), bidi (UAX #9), vertical text and Tate-Chu-Yoko
work; text-layer typing goes through the IME (`viewer_text.rs` handles preedit and commit).
## Measurement
Measured 10 October 2026 at `origin/main` 1446e27 by counting catalog rows. The denominator,
**≈ 3,900 user-visible strings**, is estimated: 618 fixed menu entries + ≈ 1,320 capitalised UI
literals in `crates/ui-egui/src` outside tests and catalogs (a regex count, so an upper bound) +
≈ 1,650 distinct effect parameter names + 306 effect names. Engine messages are not counted, so
the true percentages are slightly lower.
| Language | Code | UI strings translated | Dialogs / tooltips / help | Script support | Native review | Status | To `full` |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | `en` | ≈ 3,900 (100%, source) | All; docs in English | — | yes | full | — |
| Simplified Chinese | `zh-hans` | 1,081 (≈ 28%): menus 618/618, panels 463 | Panels and dialogs partly (≈ 35% of panel strings); no help, effects untranslated; Home screen literals unwrapped (#574) | System CJK fallback; Han follows the UI language; CJK text in comps renders wrongly (#453); IME in text layers | no | partial | 6–9 h + review |
| Spanish | `es` | 618 (≈ 16%) | Menus only | Latin, fine | no | menus only | 7–10 h + review |
| Hindi | `hi` | 0 | — | UI: Devanagari fallback font but no shaping; text layers shape Devanagari | no | none (After Effects: none) | 9–13 h + shaping in the UI |
| Arabic | `ar` | 0 | — | UI: Arabic fallback font but no shaping and no RTL layout; text layers: bidi + shaping | no | none (After Effects: none) | 9–13 h + 15–25 h RTL UI |
| French | `fr` | 0 | — | Latin, fine | no | none | 8–12 h + review |
| Portuguese (Brazil) | `pt-br` | 618 (≈ 16%) | Menus only | Latin, fine | no | menus only | 7–10 h + review |
| Indonesian | `id` | 0 | — | Latin, fine | no | none (After Effects: none) | 8–12 h + review |
| Japanese | `ja` | 1,015 (≈ 26%): menus 618/618, panels 397 | Panels and dialogs partly (≈ 30% of panel strings) | Japanese system fallback; vertical text and Tate-Chu-Yoko in text layers; IME | no | partial | 6–9 h + review |
| German | `de` | 0 | — | Latin, fine | no | none | 8–12 h + review |
| Korean | `ko` | 0 | — | No Hangul fallback probe: boxes on macOS (#599) | no | none | 9–13 h + review |
| Vietnamese | `vi` | 0 | — | Latin with stacked diacritics; untested | no | none (After Effects: none) | 8–12 h + review |
Other languages EffectCraft ships (2):
| Language | Code | UI strings translated | Status | To `full` |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | `zh-hant` | 1,081 (≈ 28%): menus 618/618, panels 463 | partial | 6–9 h + review |
| Ukrainian | `uk` | 1,015 (≈ 26%): menus 618/618, panels 397 | partial | 6–9 h + review |
After Effects also ships Italian and Russian, which EffectCraft does not (8–12 h each).
**Overall: ≈ 12%**, the average coverage of After Effects' 10 non-English languages
(Simplified and Traditional Chinese 28%, Japanese 26%, Spanish and Portuguese 16%, French,
German, Korean, Italian and Russian 0%). This is the localization row in
[target-app-parity.md](target-app-parity.md#by-dimension).
**Effort.** One-time work first: route effect names, parameter names and engine messages through
a catalog, wrap the remaining panel literals, and add a Hangul probe (10–20 h). Then each language
needs ≈ 2,900 more strings (≈ 5–9 h per language at the pace of #398 and #401). Parity with After
Effects' 10 non-English languages: **≈ 60–110 h**; the four extra languages of the standard list
(Hindi, Arabic, Indonesian, Vietnamese) add ≈ 50–80 h, most of it right-to-left layout and
complex shaping in the interface. Every language needs native-speaker review, which only a human
can give; none has had it.
## Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | major | First localization parity document: catalog rows counted for all six languages, the twelve-language table, After Effects' 11 shipped languages from its bundle |
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# Roadmap detail
> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-10 · **Change:** major (new file: milestones moved from ROADMAP.md, current focus and next steps with Opus 5.5 estimates) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026
Forward-looking detail behind the [ROADMAP](../ROADMAP.md). The work list itself, one gap at a
time, is [gaps.md](gaps.md); the numbers are in [target-app-parity.md](target-app-parity.md).
There is no `cargo xtask scorecard` or `cargo xtask parity` in this repository yet.
## Current focus
In this order (gap numbers from [gaps.md](gaps.md)):
1. **Crashes and the CI gate** (gaps 3–4, G3): fix the eight open crash reports; run
`cargo xtask ci` on every pull request. 15–30 h.
2. **Fidelity harness** (gap 2, G1): extend the AEsync ease oracle to rendered frames; a corpus
case for every P0 feature, then P1. 60–100 h; needs After Effects running on the owner's Mac.
3. **Real-user reliability** (gaps 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, G2): the open Linux and Windows interaction,
mask, effect and text bugs, each with a scripted test. 60–120 h, parallel.
4. **Owner decision on `.aep`** (gap 1, G4): then the importer. 80–160 h after the decision.
5. **Performance** (gap 5, G5): benchmarks at 1080p and 4K; real-time cached playback. 40–70 h.
## Alpha gate
The core workflows of a motion designer in After Effects, checked on EffectCraft's main platform
(macOS) from the scripted UI tests, the live After Effects ease oracle and the open issues
(standard: craftrules `standards/progress-docs.md`, "Stages"). **All six pass, so EffectCraft is
alpha**: each works end to end and the work saves and reopens; what's rough in them is listed, but
none blocks the workflow.
| Workflow | Works end to end? | Evidence | Hours to clear the rough edges |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Set up: new comp, import footage, stills, PSD/AI and audio, arrange and trim layers | yes | `file.import` and image-sequence tests, `ui_drag_drop`, `ui_project_*`; rough: a still imports as a sequence (#431), an MP3 layer can go silent (#324), multi-file drops (#552) | 2–4 |
| 2. Animate: keyframes, easing in the Graph Editor, motion paths, parenting | yes | 168 live samples match After Effects 26.3 ([fidelity/](fidelity/README.md)); `ui_keyframes`; rough: Graph Editor jitter and clipped buttons (#456, #457), negative rotation drag (#569) | 3–6 |
| 3. Motion graphics: text layers with animators, shape layers with operators | yes | `ui_text_edit`, `ui_timeline_shapes`, text and shape engine tests; rough: paragraph alignment inverted (#316), CJK text in comps (#453) | 3–6 |
| 4. Composite: masks, track mattes, blend modes, keying and effects | yes | Compositor and mask tests, 306 effects with CPU/GPU agreement; rough: mask bugs (#510, #513, #527), 32-bpc blend differences (#494), effect bugs (#580 crash, #514) | 6–12 |
| 5. Preview with audio (RAM preview, cache) | yes | `ui_ram_preview`, `ui_live_preview`; rough: stutter on cached frames (#595, #304), late audio (#554, #504) | 10–20 |
| 6. Save, reopen and deliver: `.ecproj`, auto-save, Render Queue to H.264 / ProRes / sequences | yes | Versioned-schema reopen tests, crash recovery, render-queue and encoder tests; rough: the macOS default output folder is `/`, so a render fails until an output path is chosen (#446), ProRes 4444 colour tag (#340), projects don't relink when moved | 1–3 |
The gate is not beta: beta also needs After Effects' own `.aep` projects to open (gap 1) and
≈ 75% ready for real work.
## Milestones
The original build plan; all but M7 and M12 are done. What is left after them is measured
against After Effects in [gaps.md](gaps.md), not as milestones.
| | Milestone | State |
|---|---|---|
| M0 | Skeleton: crates, compositor, the After Effects style shell, control channel, `cargo xtask` | Done (web build: [web.md](web.md)) |
| M1 | Keyframes: temporal and spatial interpolation, Easy Ease, roving, velocity | Done |
| M2 | Compositing: 38 blend modes, track mattes, parenting, adjustment layers | Done |
| M3 | Project operations: settings dialogs, layer commands, `.ecproj`, undo, After Effects menu bar | Done |
| M4 | Preview: precomps, motion blur, cached playback | Done |
| M5 | Timeline depth: graph editor, keyframe clipboard and dialogs, time remapping, pick-whips, expression editor | Done |
| M6 | Shapes, masks and footage: shape operators, masks and the pen tool, video and image import | Done |
| M7 | 3D: 3D layers, cameras, lights, shadows, depth of field, 3D views and camera tools | In review (3D gizmos, FBX/USD, Substance still missing: gaps 12–13) |
| M8 | Expressions with the After Effects object model | Done |
| M9 | Text and effects: text animators, layer styles, 306 effects incl. time and audio effects | Done |
| M10 | Export: render queue, H.264, ProRes, image sequences, GIF, audio | Done |
| M11 | Animation tools: audio, Lottie, presets, Motion Sketch, Wiggler, Smoother | Done (preset library: gap 7) |
| M12 | Performance: layer cache, parallel and GPU compositing, disk cache, motion tracking; GPU versions of the remaining CPU-only effects | Mostly done (benchmarks and hardware video: gaps 5, 15) |
| M13 | Puppet, paint, Roto Brush, tracking, plug-in API, timeline depth, trained models | Done |
| M14 | Built for agents: MCP server, CLI, control channel, Settings, shortcut editor, auto-save, crash recovery | Done |
| M15 | The web app (WebAssembly, WebGPU) | Done |
## What's next, with estimates
| Next | Gaps | Opus 5.5 hours | Parallel? | Needs a human |
|---|---|---:|---|---|
| Crash fixes and a PR CI gate | 3, 4 | 15–30 | yes | GPUs for #591 / #613 |
| G1 fidelity harness and P0/P1 corpus | 2 | 60–100 | after the harness | After Effects runs on the owner's Mac |
| Open bug backlog (Linux, Windows, masks, effects, text, 3D) | 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 24 | 100–190 | yes | Linux / Windows testers |
| `.aep` / `.aepx` import | 1 | 80–160 | partly | Owner decision on clean-room scope |
| Performance benchmarks and real-time preview | 5, 15 | 50–100 | partly | — |
| Localization depth | 16 | 60–110 | yes | Native-speaker review |
| Preset library, 26.x features, Object Matte | 7, 14, 21 | 50–95 | yes | — |
| Formats: VFX stills, MXF, 3D models, templates | 13, 17, 18, 22, 23 | 80–160 | yes | — |
| Plug-in ecosystem, multi-monitor, accessibility | 19, 20, 25 | 65–130 | yes | Owner decision on SDK hosting |
To beta (≈ 75% ready and `.aep` opening): **≈ 350–620 h**. To full parity: **≈ 850–1,500 h**.
## Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Alpha gate: six core workflows checked; all pass, stage stays alpha |
| 2026-10-10 | major | New file: milestones from ROADMAP.md, current focus, next steps with estimates |
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# Expressions and scripting parity
> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-10 · **Change:** major (first expressions and scripting checklist against After Effects 2026 26.5) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026
Expressions and ExtendScript are how After Effects work is automated and how much of it is
built: rigs, templates, studio pipelines. They are also what carries over from After Effects
today, while `.aep` projects can't. Architecture: [architecture.md](architecture.md) §5 and §5a;
extension points: [plugins.md](plugins.md); overall numbers:
[target-app-parity.md](target-app-parity.md).
**Breadth ≈ 93%, ready ≈ 65%** (estimated). The object models are written from Adobe's public
Expression Language Reference and Scripting Guide (behaviour only, AGENTS.md §2) and tested with
our own scripts; no real-world script library has been run against both apps.
| Feature | After Effects 2026 | EffectCraft | Status | Evidence / gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expression language | JavaScript engine (default) and Legacy ExtendScript | JavaScript (boa) with legacy array maths (`value + [10, 0]`) | good | `crates/expr` tests; no separate Legacy ExtendScript engine mode |
| Expression object model | `thisComp`, `thisLayer`, `wiggle`, `loopOut`, `valueAtTime`, `sampleImage`, `footage()`, text style API… | Same members, from the reference | good | `crates/expr/src/tests.rs`; behaviour of edge cases unmeasured (G1) |
| Expression editing | Inline field, error bar, pick whip, Expression Language menu, external editors | Inline field that grows, error bar, pick whips (property and value), language menu | partial | External editor support (#364) |
| Expression performance | Cached, multi-frame | Per-thread boa contexts | unknown | No benchmark |
| Scripting object model | `app`, `Project`, items, layers, properties, keys, eases, render queue, `TextDocument`, `Shape`, markers, `File`/`Folder`, `Socket`, `app.settings` | Same classes, edits run through undoable engine commands; match names table | good | `crates/script` tests (≈ 10 test files) |
| ScriptUI | Dialogs, palettes, dockable panels, resource strings, `onDraw` / ScriptUIGraphics | Same, dockable panels reopen at launch | good | `ui_scriptui`, `tests_ui*` |
| Scripts menu, ScriptUI Panels folder | yes | yes | same | [plugins.md](plugins.md) |
| Startup / Shutdown folders | yes | not run | missing | plugins.md |
| `#include`, `#target` directives | yes | a script starting with one doesn't parse | missing | plugins.md; common in real scripts |
| `.jsxbin` | yes | no | out of scope | No public specification |
| Keyboard shortcuts for scripts | yes | no | missing | plugins.md |
| Command-line rendering `aerender` | yes | `effectcraft-cli render`, `script`, `exec` | same purpose | `apps/effectcraft-cli` |
| Essential Graphics scripting hooks | `addToMotionGraphicsTemplate…` | yes (M13.7) | good | — |
| Agent control (MCP, control channel, every command) | none | yes | beyond | [agents.md](agents.md), [control-protocol.md](control-protocol.md); `list_effects` omits parameter types and ranges (#441) |
| Real-world script corpus | — | none run | gap | Run popular free scripts (the 11 sample scripts After Effects ships are a good start, run as behaviour tests, never copied) |
## Estimate
**≈ 20–40 h**: `#include` / `#target` and Startup / Shutdown folders 4–8 h, script shortcuts 2–4 h,
a corpus of public scripts and expressions with the fixes it finds 10–20 h, an expression
performance benchmark 4–8 h.
## Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | major | First expressions and scripting checklist |
docs/parity.md → docs/target-app-parity.md
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# Parity with After Effects
How close EffectCraft is to After Effects 2026, feature by feature, and how much work is left.
> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-10 · **Change:** major (full re-measure against After Effects 2026 26.5; merged `docs/parity.md` into this file; reconciled the stale per-area rows) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026 (26.5.0.89)
> **Read this as a measure of breadth, not of real-world readiness.** It checks whether each
> feature exists, using our own catalogue, graded by the agents that built it. It does not measure
> whether the feature behaves like After Effects (nothing compares the two yet), whether After
> Effects projects open (they don't), or how the app holds up for real users on every platform.
> Those gaps, and the work that closes them, are in [gaps.md](gaps.md). Don't raise the numbers
> here without the evidence gaps.md asks for. The per-area table further down has stale rows that
> have not been reconciled with the headline.
The authoritative assessment of how close EffectCraft is to After Effects, and how much work is
left. [gaps.md](gaps.md) lists every known shortfall one at a time; the
[ROADMAP](../ROADMAP.md) summarises both. Deep dives: [effects-parity.md](effects-parity.md),
[scripting-parity.md](scripting-parity.md), [file-format-parity.md](file-format-parity.md),
[ui-parity.md](ui-parity.md), [hardware-parity.md](hardware-parity.md),
[localization-parity.md](localization-parity.md), and the live measurements in
[fidelity/](fidelity/README.md).
## Current status (audit at commit `d39c0e8`, 4 October 2026; updated 5 October for M3.9–M4.12)
## Headline
| Number | Value | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| **Feature breadth** (does each After Effects 26.5 feature exist?) | **≈ 91%** | Estimated, weighted by area (table below). The self-graded 92-item checklist says 89 done / 3 partial (≈ 99%), but it was written before After Effects 26.2 and 26.5 and does not count animation presets, project formats or hardware; see the appendix |
| **Ready for real work** (can an After Effects professional do client work here?) | **≈ 45%** (range 40–50%) | Estimated: 60% feature depth (≈ 50%, table below), 15% opening and delivering work files (≈ 35%), 10% performance (≈ 35%), 10% stability (≈ 45%), 5% platforms (≈ 65%) |
| **Stage** | **alpha** | All six core workflows pass the [alpha gate](roadmap.md#alpha-gate) on macOS and ready (≈ 45%) is above the ≈ 40% bar, but `.aep` projects can't be opened, fidelity is measured for one narrow case, and 134 issues are open ([ROADMAP](../ROADMAP.md#stage)) |
| **Mainstream practitioner** (the typical motion designer's weekly work) | **≈ 47%** | Estimated: everyday depth 72% × interaction 0.90 × stability 0.90 × file exchange 0.80 ([below](#mainstream-practitioner)) |
| **Essentials user** (core features only) | **≈ 52%** | Estimated: core depth 77% × launch/stability 0.88 × clarity 0.90 × opening files 0.85 ([below](#essentials-user)) |
| Remaining to **beta** (≈ 75% ready, `.aep` opens) | **≈ 350–620 Opus 5.5 agent-hours** | Estimated |
| Remaining to **full parity** | **≈ 850–1,500 Opus 5.5 agent-hours** | Estimated |
### Readiness by audience
| Audience | Ready % | Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock hours to ~95% | Work that dominates |
|---|---:|---:|---|
| Full target (ready for real work) | ≈ 45% | ≈ 850–1,500 h | `.aep` import, a fidelity corpus for every feature, the bug backlog, performance, hardware video, formats, localization, ecosystem |
| Mainstream practitioner | ≈ 47% | ≈ 280–530 h | `.aep` exchange (80–160 h), stability and crash fixes (40–80 h), fidelity of the everyday features (40–70 h), everyday-area bugs and depth (60–110 h), interaction feel (30–60 h), preview speed (25–50 h) |
| Essentials user | ≈ 52% | ≈ 150–300 h | Opening the `.aep` files tutorials ship, basic subset (60–120 h), start-up and stability (20–40 h), core-feature bugs and clarity (30–60 h), preview with sound (20–40 h), fidelity of the core features (20–40 h) |
Each audience's hours are a subset of the next (essentials ≤ mainstream ≤ full). They are
calibrated like the rest of this file ([calibration](#calibration-of-the-hours)): a behaviour bug
with its regression test ≈ 0.1–0.3 h, a mid-size feature 1–4 h. About 60–70% parallelises across
5–8 agents. The serial parts: the `.aep` owner decision before the importer, and the fidelity
harness before per-feature scores. Every audience needs After Effects running on the owner's Mac
for reference captures.
The previous headline (5 October: breadth ≈ 99%, real use ≈ 30–50%) moved for these reasons:
breadth went **down** because this pass measured against 26.5 rather than our own catalogue and
found missing features the catalogue never listed (Object Matte, Substance materials, ACES 2.0
configs, proportional scrubbing, copy frame to clipboard, paste SVG/AI as shapes, percentage
guides, After Effects' 621 animation presets, FBX/USD/STL models, Media Encoder-style hardware
encoding); real use moved **up** to the upper half of the old range because the 5–10 October
work closed 179 issues, most of them user-reported bugs fixed with regression tests, added six partial UI languages
and a first live After Effects fidelity measurement. It is still an estimate: nothing renders a
corpus in both apps yet.
## How this was measured
- **Target.** Adobe After Effects 2026, the copy installed on the owner's Mac:
`CFBundleShortVersionString` 26.5.0, build 26.5.0.89. The one live fidelity comparison
([fidelity/README.md](fidelity/README.md)) used 26.3x87.
- **From the installed bundle (file names and listings only, per [AGENTS.md](../AGENTS.md) §2):**
`Info.plist` `CFBundleDocumentTypes` (26 document types: `.aep`, `.aepx`, `.aet`, `.aetx`,
`.mogrt`, `.mgjson`, `.aecap`, `.aegraphic`, `.ffx`, `.ars`, `.aom`, `.jsx`, `.psd`, `.cin`,
`.mov`, `.pct`, `.pic`…); the `Plug-ins/Format` importers (AIFF, Animate, JPEG, OpenEXR, PNG,
Premiere Pro import, Photoshop layers in and out, Radiance, SGI, SVG, Targa, the standard
multi-format plug-in); `Plug-ins/Effects` (306 `.plugin` bundles in 231 entries);
`Presets` (**621** `.ffx` animation presets); `Scripts` (11 sample scripts, Startup / Shutdown /
ScriptUI Panels folders); `Resources/usd_plugins` (USD, FBX, glTF, OBJ, STL); `Resources/MLModels`
(FastMask, ShotCutDetection) and tokenizer folders (Whisper, BERT, Marian); `.lproj`
localisations (11 languages, [localization-parity.md](localization-parity.md)).
After Effects was not launched for this pass, so there is no menu dump.
- **From Adobe's public release notes** for 26.2 (April 2026: Object Matte, displacement on
parametric meshes, Quick Apply, Proportional Scrubbing), 26.3 (June 2026: Advanced 3D depth of
field, paste SVG/AI as shapes, faster mask tracker, copy frame to clipboard, Curl Noise,
variable-font filter) and 26.5 (September 2026: percentage guides, Object Matte disk cache,
effect colour labels, a rebuilt Effect Controls panel, ACES 2.0 through OpenColorIO 2.5.1).
- **From this repository at `origin/main` 1446e27 (10 October 2026):** 587 menu entries in the
After Effects-shaped menu tree (`crates/engine/src/menus.rs`), 411 registered engine commands,
306 registered effects (280 on the GPU, [effects.md](effects.md)), 12 export formats
(`OutputFormat::ALL`), the import extension lists (`crates/media/src/lib.rs`), 2,704 tests, ≈ 329,000
lines of Rust, 6 UI language catalogs, and the 134 open / 179 closed GitHub issues.
- **Presence is not parity.** A feature counts toward *breadth* when it exists and works in the
common case; it counts toward *ready* in proportion to how much of the area a professional
could rely on, discounted for open bugs in it, for being unmeasured against After Effects, and
for being checked on one platform only.
### Calibration of the hours
Hours are **Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock hours**: one agent session working sequentially, tests and
verification included. Calibrated against this repository's own history:
- The whole repository (≈ 329,000 lines including tests, 1,142 commits, 233 merged PRs) was built
between 1 and 10 October 2026, typically by 4–8 agents at once: roughly 700–1,000 agent-hours,
or ≈ 350–450 lines per agent-hour. Getting to today's ≈ 45% took that; the estimate to full
parity is about 1–1.5× it again, because what is left is measurement, compatibility and
long-tail behaviour rather than new code.
- Named arcs (from the audit notes kept below): Classic 3D ≈ 2.7 h, timeline depth (graph editor,
keyframe dialogs, time remapping, pen and masks) ≈ 2.3 h, 85 effects ≈ 1.2 h, the After Effects
menu bar ≈ 1.3 h, layer styles ≈ 0.6 h; a wave the audit priced at 21 h took ≈ 6 agent-hours
but landed at 80–90%.
- Recent PRs (commit-to-merge): seven Timeline/viewer issues (#436) ≈ 0.6 h; eight tweaks from
#290 (#383) ≈ 1 h; image-sequence import (#384) ≈ 4 h; panel i18n infrastructure plus 384
Chinese strings (#398) ≈ 2–3 h; one 618-row menu language (#401 Ukrainian) ≈ 1.5–2 h; EXR
beauty layer + OCIO v2 configs (#449) ≈ 1.3 h. So a user-reported behaviour bug costs ≈ 0.1–0.3 h,
a mid-size feature 1–4 h.
- What history can't calibrate: fidelity work (each corpus case needs After Effects running,
which only the owner's Mac has), `.aep` import (blocked on an owner decision), and anything
needing hardware we don't have. Those carry the widest ranges.
- **Parallelism:** about 70% of the hours parallelise across 5–8 agents (effects fidelity,
languages, bugs, formats are independent). Serial chains: the G1 harness before per-feature
fidelity scores; the `.aep` decision before `.aep` work. **Needs a human:** the `.aep`
clean-room decision, running After Effects for oracle captures, native-speaker review of every
language, Windows/Linux GPU hardware for #591/#596/#613, and an optional decision on hosting
After Effects SDK plug-ins.
## By feature area
Weights are the share of a typical motion designer's working time in After Effects (animation,
compositing and effects dominate; audio is light). Hours are to full parity for the area.
| Area | Weight | Breadth | Ready | Hours | Biggest gaps (details in [gaps.md](gaps.md)) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---|
| Project, footage and import | 8% | 92% | 55% | 25–45 | No relative paths or relinking when a project moves; Media Browser lists TGA/DPX/HDR/AVI/MXF it can't import; any image imports as a sequence (#431); MP3 layer goes silent (#324); multi-file drops (#552, #351) |
| Compositions, layers and compositing | 13% | 98% | 60% | 30–55 | 32-bpc blend modes differ from After Effects (#494); mask modes (#527, #510, #513); separated Position edits (#539, #540); expand precomps in place (#601) |
| Animation: keyframes, graph editor, motion paths, puppet | 15% | 97% | 55% | 35–60 | Only scalar ease is measured against After Effects (168 samples); Graph Editor jitter and clipped buttons (#456, #457); bulk keyframing (#355); pen tools on motion paths (#553); puppet lag and jump (#586, #318); Proportional Scrubbing (26.2) |
| Expressions and scripting | 7% | 93% | 65% | 20–40 | `.jsxbin`, Startup/Shutdown folders, `#include`; external editor (#364); see [scripting-parity.md](scripting-parity.md) |
| Shapes, masks and roto | 9% | 93% | 45% | 30–50 | Several open mask bugs (#510, #513, #527); Roto Brush size (#509); Mesh Warp can't be dragged (#303); paste SVG/AI as shape layers (26.3) |
| Text and typography | 7% | 94% | 50% | 20–35 | CJK text in comps renders wrongly (#453); paragraph alignment inverted (#316); squeezed text at 4:3 (#483); font search (#583); soft text at Fit (#417); variable-font filter (26.3) |
| Effects and animation presets | 14% | 85% | 40% | 70–130 | All 306 effects exist, but rendered output is unmeasured against After Effects; 8 built-in presets against After Effects' 621; open effect bugs (#580 crash, #514, #526, #463, #369, #473); effect colour labels (26.5); see [effects-parity.md](effects-parity.md) |
| 3D (Classic and Advanced) | 6% | 82% | 35% | 35–65 | No FBX/USD/STL models, no Substance materials, mesh displacement unverified; no 3D transform gizmos (#392, #347); Z position (#489); reflections (#261); camera aperture (#260); bevel options (#315) |
| Tracking and AI-assisted tools | 5% | 80% | 35% | 35–70 | No Object Matte (26.2); Roto Brush (MobileSAM) and face tracking (MediaPipe) unmeasured against After Effects; camera-tracker view (#505) |
| Preview and cache | 7% | 92% | 40% | 25–50 | Playback stutters on cached frames (#595, #304); slow scrubbing (#329); late audio (#554, #504, #335); no benchmark against After Effects |
| Render queue and export | 7% | 85% | 55% | 25–45 | No hardware encoding; ProRes 4444 colour tag (#340); rendering over an existing file (#325); default macOS output location (#446); uncompressed single-file output (#372); HEVC/AV1 without B-frames |
| Audio | 2% | 85% | 45% | 6–12 | Audio sync and crackle (#335); audio to keyframes depth |
| **Weighted** | 100% | **≈ 91%** | **≈ 50%** | **≈ 360–660** | |
Feature depth (≈ 50%) feeds the overall *ready* number with the other dimensions below.
## By dimension
| Dimension | % | Hours | Evidence | Doc |
|---|---:|---:|---|---|
| Features, breadth | 91% | (in features) | Table above | this file |
| Features, ready for real work | 50% | 360–660 | Table above | this file, [gaps.md](gaps.md) |
| UI/UX fidelity | 65% | 60–120 | After Effects-shaped menus (587 entries), panels, workspaces, shortcuts; many interaction issues still open; no multi-monitor; Effect Controls not yet like 26.5's | [ui-parity.md](ui-parity.md) |
| File formats | 50% | 130–230 | `.aep` / `.aepx` / `.mogrt` / `.ffx` can't be read; strong modern codecs (H.264, HEVC, AV1, VP9, ProRes) | [file-format-parity.md](file-format-parity.md) |
| Hardware | 40% | 60–120 | wgpu GPU on Metal/Vulkan/Direct3D 12/WebGPU with CPU fallback; no hardware decode/encode; Direct3D 12 compositor fails (#613); no video-out hardware | [hardware-parity.md](hardware-parity.md) |
| Localization | 12% | 60–110 + review | Average coverage of After Effects' 10 non-English languages (measured catalog rows over ≈ 3,900 strings): menus 618/618 in 6 languages, panels in 4, effects in none; After Effects ships 11 languages fully | [localization-parity.md](localization-parity.md) |
| Performance | 35% | 50–100 | Internal numbers only; users report stutter and slow scrubbing | [gaps.md](gaps.md#g5-performance-at-real-world-scale) |
| Stability | 45% | 40–80 | Open crash reports #580, #591, #501, #426, #341, #306, #234, #511; no CI runs the tests on pull requests | [gaps.md](gaps.md#g3-stability-and-a-green-main) |
| Platforms | 65% | 30–60 | Releases for macOS, Windows x64/x86/ARM64, Linux, FreeBSD and the web (more than After Effects), but Linux and Windows users hit basic bugs | [gaps.md](gaps.md#g2-real-user-reliability-on-every-platform) |
| Ecosystem and plug-ins | 20% | 40–80 | After Effects scripts and expressions mostly carry over; no After Effects SDK plug-ins, `.ffx` presets or `.mogrt`; our WebAssembly plug-in API has no third-party plug-ins yet | [plugins.md](plugins.md) |
| AI features | 35% | 40–80 (overlaps Tracking) | Roto Brush (MobileSAM) and face tracking (MediaPipe) as optional downloads; no Object Matte; the After Effects bundle ships Whisper, BERT and Marian tokenizers and a shot-cut model we have no equivalent of | [gaps.md](gaps.md) |
| Agent control (beyond After Effects) | ahead | — | Every command is drivable over MCP, the control channel and the CLI | [agents.md](agents.md) |
**Totals.** Summing the rows double-counts: AI overlaps Tracking, performance overlaps Preview,
UI overlaps every area. With the overlaps removed: **≈ 850–1,500 h to full parity**, of which
**≈ 350–620 h to beta**: `.aep` import (80–160 h, after the owner decision), the G1 fidelity
harness and P0/P1 corpus (60–100 h), the open bug and crash backlog (40–80 h), performance to
real-time preview at 1080p (40–70 h), Linux/Windows reliability (30–50 h), and feature depth in
animation, masks, effects and text (100–160 h).
## Ready for real work: how the number is built
The full-target number is a written weighted sum, not a single judgement:
| Component | Weight | Value | Source |
|---|---:|---:|---|
| Feature depth | 60% | 50% | Weighted feature-area table above |
| Opening and delivering work files | 15% | 35% | [file-format-parity.md](file-format-parity.md): `.aep` / `.mogrt` / `.ffx` 0%, delivery formats strong |
| Performance | 10% | 35% | By dimension, below |
| Stability | 10% | 45% | By dimension, below |
| Platforms | 5% | 65% | By dimension, below |
| **Result** | | **46.2%**, reported as **≈ 45%** (40–50%) | Rounded down to the nearest 5: no live render comparison exists yet |
Checked on 10 October 2026 when the mainstream and essentials numbers were added: it is unchanged.
## Mainstream practitioner and essentials user
Two narrower questions, computed the same way in every craft app (craftrules
`standards/progress-docs.md`, "Numbers"). The stage still follows the full-target number and the
[alpha gate](roadmap.md#alpha-gate).
### Mainstream practitioner
**≈ 47%** (estimated).
*Can the typical professional motion designer do their weekly work here?* Areas are the alpha-gate
workflows and their everyday tools. Left out: third-party plug-ins and `.ffx` preset libraries,
generative/cloud AI (Object Matte, Firefly), Adobe services and team features, specialist hardware
(video I/O, tablets), languages other than English, and areas a typical designer uses rarely
(Advanced 3D models, 3D camera tracking, Roto Brush). Depth is for the everyday subset of each area
(the common effects, the common formats), which is why it sits above the full feature-area table.
| Area (everyday subset) | Weight | Depth | Evidence |
|---|---:|---:|---|
| Project and import: MOV/MP4, PNG/JPEG sequences, PSD/AI, WAV/MP3 | 10% | 75% | Import tests; #431 still imported as a sequence, #324 MP3 silence |
| Comps, layers, blend modes, mattes, parenting, precomps | 16% | 80% | Compositor tests; #494 32-bpc blend modes, #539/#540 separated Position |
| Keyframes, Graph Editor, easing, motion paths | 20% | 75% | 168 live samples match After Effects; #456/#457, #553, #569 |
| Expressions: `wiggle`, `loopOut`, linking, sliders | 6% | 80% | `crates/expr` tests; no live expression oracle yet |
| Shape layers and masks | 12% | 65% | #510, #513, #527 mask bugs; #303 Mesh Warp |
| Text and text animators | 12% | 70% | #316 alignment inverted, #453 CJK, #583 font search |
| Everyday effects: blurs, glow, fill/tint, curves/levels, keying, drop shadow, displacement | 10% | 70% | All present with GPU paths; unmeasured against After Effects; #514 Apply Color LUT |
| Preview (RAM preview with audio) | 8% | 55% | #595, #304 stutter; #554, #504 late audio |
| Render to H.264 / ProRes / PNG sequences | 6% | 75% | Encoder tests; #446 default macOS output folder, #340 ProRes 4444 tag |
| **Average depth** | 100% | **72.2%** | |
Discounts for what still stops real work:
| Discount | Factor | Evidence |
|---|---:|---|
| Interaction fidelity | ×0.90 | UI parity ≈ 65% ([ui-parity.md](ui-parity.md)): Graph Editor jitter, snapping (#352), viewer zoom keys (#570), no multi-monitor (#486) |
| Stability on real machines | ×0.90 | Eight open crash reports (#580, #591, #501, #426, #341, #306, #234, #511); Direct3D 12 compositor fails (#613); no CI on pull requests |
| File exchange with After Effects users | ×0.80 | Can't open `.aep`, `.aepx`, `.mogrt` or `.ffx` sent by colleagues or bought as templates; PSD, AI, footage and rendered deliverables exchange fine |
72.2% × 0.90 × 0.90 × 0.80 = **46.8%, ≈ 47%**. It sits only just above the full number because
the gap is not in After Effects' long tail: fidelity, stability and `.aep` exchange hit
mainstream users as hard as specialists.
### Essentials user
**≈ 52%** (estimated).
*Can someone who only touches the core features (a social-media animator, a student, a
first-time user) get their work done?* No advanced options, pro workflows or exchange edge cases.
| Core feature | Weight | Depth | Evidence |
|---|---:|---:|---|
| Launch, new project, undo, save, reopen | 10% | 85% | Versioned project reopen tests, auto-save and crash recovery |
| Import a video, picture or song | 10% | 75% | #431 a picture imported as a sequence, #324 MP3 silence |
| New comp; move, scale, rotate, fade and trim layers | 15% | 80% | `ui_viewer`, Timeline tests |
| Add and style text | 10% | 70% | #316, #583 |
| Draw shapes and simple masks | 10% | 70% | Shape tool tests; #513 mask drawing feedback |
| Keyframes and Easy Ease | 15% | 85% | Ease measured against After Effects |
| Apply a few common effects | 10% | 75% | Effects & Presets search, Effect Controls tests |
| Preview with sound | 10% | 65% | #595 stutter, #554 late audio |
| Export an MP4 | 10% | 80% | H.264 encoder tests; #446 |
| **Average depth** | 100% | **76.75%** | |
| Discount | Factor | Evidence |
|---|---:|---|
| Launch and stability | ×0.88 | Start-up failures (#501, #234 macOS 27, #596 GPU not detected, #613 Direct3D 12); #426 timeline crash while playing |
| Discoverability and UI clarity | ×0.90 | After Effects' dense layout reproduced faithfully; Home screen and interactive Learn tutorials help; renders fail silently on macOS until an output folder is chosen (#446); layout nitpicks (#581) |
| Opening files people send | ×0.85 | Tutorial projects and templates arrive as `.aep` / `.mogrt`, which don't open |
76.75% × 0.88 × 0.90 × 0.85 = **51.7%, ≈ 52%**.
### User evidence (GitHub, 10 October 2026)
Counted from all 315 issues and their comments, excluding the maintainer account and
agent-generated maintainer replies:
- **Praise:** 5 people in 5 issues say so outright: "felt almost exactly like After Effects.
Really impressive" (#611), "performance has been excellent" (#326), "Awesome project" (#322),
"Great work" (#293), "great tool and AE alternative" (#290). About 6 more open with "would love…"
in a feature request.
- **"Switched from After Effects" reports:** none found. #468 is a working motion designer's
list of Mac issues, so people are trying it on real work.
- **Open issues (136):** ≈ 95 are core-path bugs (masks, keyframes, timeline, preview, audio,
text, render, crashes; this includes 15 community `fix(...)` proposals), ≈ 40 are feature
requests or niche (plug-in hosting, OpenFX, ffmpeg export, Discord presence, Store listing,
rigging tools). Mostly core-path bugs, which matches the discounts above.
## Out of scope by design
Adobe services (Team Projects, Libraries, Stock, Media Encoder, Dynamic Link, Frame.io,
Exchange, Firefly), third-party bundles (Cineware / Cinema 4D, Mocha), and formats without a
public specification or permissive data (`.prproj`, `.jsxbin`, Vanishing Point `.vpe`, the
predefined CJK CMaps in PDF import, Kodak film emulations) are not counted against breadth.
`.aep` / `.aepx` *are* counted: they are the main file format and decide beta.
---
## Appendix: feature-checklist audit history
Moved here from `docs/parity.md` on 10 October 2026 and kept as evidence. It scores the 92-item
catalogue in `plan/aftereffects/feature-catalog.md`, graded by the agents that built the
features; read it as breadth only. **Its per-area table ("By area", below) was stale**
(Interface 75%, Project 68%, Animation 70%, Paint 0% next to a 99% headline) and is superseded by
the feature-area table above; it is kept for its "biggest gaps" notes, which record what
landed when.
### Checklist status (audit at commit `d39c0e8`, 4 October 2026; updated 5 October for M3.9–M4.12)
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
@@ -53,15 +317,15 @@ Out of clean-room scope (no public specification or no permissively licensed dat
emulations. Adobe service integrations (Team Projects, Libraries, Media Encoder, Dynamic Link,
Frame.io, Exchange) and third-party plug-ins (Cinema 4D, Mocha) are intentionally absent.
### Previous audit (commit `58163a2`, 3 October 2026, evening): ≈ 98%
#### Previous audit (commit `58163a2`, 3 October 2026, evening): ≈ 98%
87 done / 5 partial / 0 missing.
### Previous audit (commit `978e8d7`, 3 October 2026): ≈ 94%
#### Previous audit (commit `978e8d7`, 3 October 2026): ≈ 94%
80 done / 12 partial / 0 missing.
### Previous audit (commit `fa26ad9`, 2 October 2026, late): ≈ 93%
#### Previous audit (commit `fa26ad9`, 2 October 2026, late): ≈ 93%
By area: Layers 98%, Output 95%, Compositions 95%, Automation 96%, Paint 95%, Text 95%, Import 96%,
Animation 94%, Masks 94%, Preview 94%, Interface 93%, Shapes 93%, 3D 91%, Audio 90%, Project 90%,
@@ -80,7 +344,7 @@ thread counts — landed in M13.1 (GPU particles landed in M12.7). Render Queue
The sections below are the original audit (morning of 2 October, ≈ 64%) and its updates, kept for
history.
## Summary
### Summary
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
@@ -107,7 +371,7 @@ Work in progress at the time of the audit, not yet counted: motion tracking, pre
keyboard shortcut editor, auto-save and crash recovery, paint and puppet tools, Lottie import and
export.
## Update after the second wave (same day, commit `e1f7241`)
### Update after the second wave (same day, commit `e1f7241`)
Motion tracking (1-, 2- and 4-point, stabilize, corner pin), paint (Brush, Clone Stamp, Eraser
with write-on) and the puppet tools, preferences, a keyboard shortcut editor that rebinds,
@@ -129,7 +393,7 @@ hours** at the pace observed so far and **≈ 35–40 hours** if the audit's fig
hardest remaining systems (Roto Brush, Warp Stabilizer, the 3D camera tracker, Advanced 3D, GPU
rendering, on-canvas text editing) are where the conservative figure is most likely to be right.
## Update at the end of 2 October 2026
### Update at the end of 2 October 2026
A third wave landed: viewer interactions (snapping, rulers, channels, exposure, snapshots, region
of interest, shape pen and pen-tool family, motion-path handles, graph editor transform box),
@@ -155,7 +419,7 @@ M6.7; native macOS menus, the Composition Flowchart, Timeline column/search dept
and every After Effects workspace in the UI-polish wave; PSD/SVG import, WebM/WAV/AIFF output and
the disk cache in the formats wave; the 3D Camera Tracker in M12.6.)
## By area
### By area (stale; superseded on 2026-10-10 by the feature-area table at the top)
| Area | Weighted parity | Remaining (agent-hours) | Biggest gaps |
|---|---|---|---|
@@ -178,7 +442,7 @@ the disk cache in the formats wave; the 3D Camera Tracker in M12.6.)
| Tracking | ≈ 96% | 0.3 | face tracking's trained model (MediaPipe Face Landmarker, M13.36) is an optional download; without it the classical (skin model + feature components + shape model) fitter is weak on profile views and occluded faces; Rolling Shutter Ripple is approximated by Subspace Warp's mesh density (face tracking (Outline Only / Detailed Features with Face Track Points and Extract & Copy Face Measurements), Subspace Warp's content-preserving mesh warp on subspace-smoothed trajectories, and radial lens distortion (k1, k2) in the camera bundle adjustment with Undistort Footage landed in M13.3; Rolling Shutter Repair in M9.11; point tracker, mask tracking, Warp Stabilizer and the 3D Camera Tracker in M6.x / M12.5 / M12.6) |
| Paint | 0% | 4.0 | Brush, Clone Stamp, Eraser |
## Effects still missing
### Effects still missing
The full catalogue with GPU / 32-bpc badges and per-effect status is [effects.md](effects.md)
(generated from the registry).
@@ -186,7 +450,7 @@ The full catalogue with GPU / 32-bpc badges and per-effect status is [effects.md
None: the 3D Camera Tracker landed in M12.6. Boris FX
Mocha and Cineware are third-party and not counted.
### Added in M9.11 (39 effects)
#### Added in M9.11 (39 effects)
| Category | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|
@@ -201,7 +465,7 @@ Mocha and Cineware are third-party and not counted.
| Utility | Color Profile Converter | Our colour spaces and ACES; rendering intents (perceptual gamut compression, relative / absolute colorimetric, saturation). |
| Matte | Mocha shape | Mocha's export format is not public: reads a documented JSON shape format instead. |
## Update: M13.5 long-tail polish
### Update: M13.5 long-tail polish
Stroke Taper / Wave / multi-segment dashes and the radial gradient highlight (SHP-2);
variable-width mask feather points (MSK-1; mask motion blur verified by tests); the Adaptive
@@ -217,7 +481,7 @@ Reference Axes; Animate Text ▸ Variable Font Axes. Remaining in these rows: Lo
taper/wave (the Variable Font Axes animator changes advances since M13.12, the Character panel's
axes since M13.6; Advanced 3D's DOF has iris shapes since M13.8).
## Update: M13.8 Preview panel, Align panel, Advanced 3D completion
### Update: M13.8 Preview panel, Align panel, Advanced 3D completion
- **Preview panel (PRV-1)**: Shortcut popup (Spacebar, Shift+Spacebar, Numpad 0, Shift+Numpad
0, Alt+Numpad 0), each shortcut with its own saved options (settings `preview`): Include
@@ -238,7 +502,7 @@ axes since M13.6; Advanced 3D's DOF has iris shapes since M13.8).
as real geometry lit by the parent (2D collapsed precomps draw nested 3D layers with the
parent's renderer); text and shape strokes extrude as bevelled meshes in paint order.
## Update: M13.22 GPU effects, part A
### Update: M13.22 GPU effects, part A
- **GPU ports (EFF-5)**: 30 more effects run on the GPU (196 GPU effects), each matching the
CPU oracle within 1/255 (8 bpc) / 1e-3 (32 bpc) on every tested pixel, directly on a buffer
@@ -275,7 +539,7 @@ axes since M13.6; Advanced 3D's DOF has iris shapes since M13.8).
comps. The GPU walk matches the CPU compositor on the same rasters exactly at 8 and 32 bpc,
with only the frame's own readback.
## Update: M13.13 GPU performance and the remaining GPU ports
### Update: M13.13 GPU performance and the remaining GPU ports
- **Small comps on the GPU (PRV-3)**: the GPU frame allocated (and zero-initialised) several
full-frame RGBA f32 textures per layer; working textures now come from a pool (reused once
@@ -303,7 +567,7 @@ axes since M13.6; Advanced 3D's DOF has iris shapes since M13.8).
Vertical Distortion render on the CPU (`gpu_supported`), since their Newton inverse wanders
chaotically near the crease and f32 settles on other pixels.
## Update: M13.11 Advanced 3D on the GPU, Essential Graphics mirrors, ScriptUI paint
### Update: M13.11 Advanced 3D on the GPU, Essential Graphics mirrors, ScriptUI paint
- **Advanced 3D on the GPU (PRV-3, 3D-3)**: a whole Advanced 3D run renders on the device
(`gpu::adv3d`, `Renderer::prepare_adv_run`, `Accelerator::render_3d`): every motion-blur
@@ -338,7 +602,7 @@ axes since M13.6; Advanced 3D's DOF has iris shapes since M13.8).
`drawImage`, image controls and icon buttons; script-host threads are compiled out of the
web build (no dead code warnings).
## Update: M13.5 UI completion & fidelity
### Update: M13.5 UI completion & fidelity
**Extended Viewer** (Settings ▸ 3D, the viewer's Extended Viewer button, `view.extendedViewer`):
custom 3D views (and the Active Camera view with Draft 3D on) render the visible pasteboard
@@ -356,7 +620,7 @@ workspace bar order (Default, Review, Learn, Small Screen, Standard) and a singl
above the viewer. Not yet: Composition Settings / Render Queue / Settings dialogs compared
pixel by pixel (no reference captures of them yet).
## Update: M13.6 panels and content tools
### Update: M13.6 panels and content tools
The last placeholder panels became real panels with automation ids: **Lumetri Scopes**
(waveform RGB / Luma / YC, vectorscope YUV / HLS, histogram, parade RGB / YUV; Rec. 601 / 709 /
@@ -375,7 +639,7 @@ menu entries. Not yet: creating a reference frame by editing a still (After Effe
Photoshop), Content-Aware Fill's learned model (ours is PatchMatch + flow propagation), and Media
Browser in the web app (landed in M13.10: browser storage and File System Access folders).
## Update: M13.12 import and text leftovers, test hardening
### Update: M13.12 import and text leftovers, test hardening
- **PDF / AI**: mesh shadings — free-form and lattice-form Gouraud triangle meshes (types 4, 5),
Coons and tensor-product patch meshes (6, 7, tessellated to triangles) — and function-based
@@ -401,7 +665,7 @@ Browser in the web app (landed in M13.10: browser storage and File System Access
wrong signatures and versions, fuel exhaustion, traps and bit-identical output; script
`Socket` validates ports, and ScriptUI resource strings accept trailing array commas.
## Update: text and viewer fidelity (G1)
### Update: text and viewer fidelity (G1)
Fixes from measured reports:
@@ -420,7 +684,7 @@ Fixes from measured reports:
factor) instead of minified bilinearly (#417). Not yet: the viewer resolution and magnification
are not remembered between launches.
## Update: plug-ins and extensions as in After Effects; ease presets become a ScriptUI panel
### Update: plug-ins and extensions as in After Effects; ease presets become a ScriptUI panel
EffectCraft's core keeps After Effects parity; what After Effects users get from third parties is
an extension, on the same extension points After Effects has ([plugins.md](plugins.md) compares
@@ -455,7 +719,7 @@ them: scripts, ScriptUI panels, effect plug-ins, with a guide to writing a panel
Extended and Snap to Features in Collapsed Compositions and Text Layers (the layers inside
collapsed precomp layers snap); the per-feature toggles are gone and every feature snaps.
## Update: M5.9–M5.14 keyframes, M3.15 clipboard, M12.8 responsiveness
### Update: M5.9–M5.14 keyframes, M3.15 clipboard, M12.8 responsiveness
- **The app froze every 10 s on Windows** (M12.8): the cache budgets' memory reading started
PowerShell on the UI thread and waited about a second for it. It runs on a background thread
@@ -585,7 +849,7 @@ rather than the keyed frame (Ctrl/Cmd+click averages 5 × 5 pixels); agents do t
`effect.pickColor {effect, param, x, y, average?}` (effect space). Searching "keylight" in
Effects & Presets, or `list_effects`, finds it.
## Update: M4.9–M4.11 nested comps and motion blur
### Update: M4.9–M4.11 nested comps and motion blur
- **Composition Settings ▸ Advanced ▸ Preserve frame rate when nested or in render queue** and
**Preserve resolution when nested** (model, renderer, Render Queue, dialog, `comp.settings`,
@@ -601,7 +865,7 @@ Not yet: collapsed precomps don't blur with the precomp layer's own motion or th
camera's; animated content inside a layer (shape paths, text animators, nested frames) isn't
re-rendered per sub-sample; nested comp markers on the precomp layer bar.
## Update: M4.5–M4.8 cached playback
### Update: M4.5–M4.8 cached playback
- **RAM preview keys** carry the render options (Fast Previews Draft / Fast Draft, Realtime
Shadows), so a mode switch never shows frames rendered the other way; eviction drops the least
@@ -618,7 +882,7 @@ re-rendered per sub-sample; nested comp markers on the precomp layer bar.
Not yet: content-keyed RAM frames (an edit drops every comp's RAM frames; the disk cache keeps
content keys), audio scrubbing, four snapshot slots.
## Update: M3.14 project files
### Update: M3.14 project files
Project files name the version that wrote them (`savedBy`); opening one that a newer EffectCraft
saved warns that what this version doesn't know is lost on saving (`file.open` reports
@@ -627,7 +891,7 @@ fails the save with a message instead of writing a project that can never be ope
on disk is left as it was). Increment and Save and Save a Copy keep an XML project (`.ecprojx`)
XML; a file that isn't a project says so by name.
## Update: M3.13 menu bar
### Update: M3.13 menu bar
Group Shapes (Ctrl+G) and Ungroup Shapes (Ctrl+Shift+G) moved to the Layer menu itself, where
After Effects has them; Window ▸ Learn opens the Home screen's Learn tab; Composition ▸
@@ -637,7 +901,7 @@ Window's shortcut); Layer ▸ Transform ▸ Center In View shows Ctrl+Home; "Rev
Viewer (several unlocked Composition viewers at once; View ▸ Split with New Locked Viewer adds
the one locked viewer the interface has).
## Update: M3.12 Pre-compose and New Comp from Selection
### Update: M3.12 Pre-compose and New Comp from Selection
- **Pre-compose** makes the new composition with the original's settings (pixel aspect,
background, motion blur shutter / samples / switch, frame blending switch, 3D renderer); it
@@ -649,7 +913,7 @@ the one locked viewer the interface has).
(`file.newCompFromSelection {single, dimensionsFrom, duration, addToRenderQueue, sequence,
overlap, overlapDuration, transition}`). `layer.addItem {duration}` sets a still's length.
## Update: M3.11 layer commands
### Update: M3.11 layer commands
- **Lock**: locked layers can't be selected (a Timeline click, Select All, Ctrl+Up / Down step
over them, as do shy layers while hidden) and are left alone by Clear / Delete, Arrange, the
@@ -667,7 +931,7 @@ the one locked viewer the interface has).
matte when both were copied, else the original in the same composition (paste dropped them
always).
## Update: M3.10 Layer Settings and settings dialogs
### Update: M3.10 Layer Settings and settings dialogs
Layer ▸ Layer Settings on a solid or adjustment layer opens Solid Settings on the layer's solid
(it did nothing before): name, size, Pixel Aspect Ratio, colour and **Affect all layers that use
@@ -679,7 +943,7 @@ for every control (`dialog.comp.*`, `dialog.solid.*`), Composition Settings take
frame rate besides the list, New Composition starts from the settings of the last composition
made with it, and their colour buttons show the stored sRGB colour (they showed it lighter).
## Update: M3.9 unsaved changes
### Update: M3.9 unsaved changes
Closing a modified project asks first, as After Effects does: Quit and the window's close
button, File ▸ New Project, Open Project, Open Recent, Close Project, the demo project and a Home
@@ -690,7 +954,7 @@ the project's path and `*` while it has unsaved changes. The modified mark now f
and edits that change nothing record no undo step. Agents' `engine.execute` / MCP calls are never
asked; the control channel's `app.quit {force: true}` skips the prompt.
## Update: M13.25 Home template gallery, Simulate Output ▸ My Custom RGB
### Update: M13.25 Home template gallery, Simulate Output ▸ My Custom RGB
**Home ▸ Templates** (UI-7; File ▸ New ▸ New Project from Template…): a gallery of eight
original built-in project templates authored in code from engine commands — Lower Third, Title
@@ -717,7 +981,7 @@ in Settings (`customRgb`) and simulated like the built-in profiles, with Preserv
ICC profiles too (`lut8Type`, `lut16Type`, `lutAToBType` / `lutBToAType`, evaluated from the
public ICC specification and baked into a 3D LUT for the viewer).
### M13.26: Premiere Pro interop via timeline interchange
#### M13.26: Premiere Pro interop via timeline interchange
| Feature | After Effects | EffectCraft | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
@@ -728,7 +992,7 @@ Not yet: native `.prproj` (no public specification; awaits a decision), media em
(not extracted), Premiere effects other than Motion/Opacity/Volume, speed
ramps, titles/graphics, and Dynamic Link.
## Update: M13.23 GPU effects, part B (EFF-5)
### Update: M13.23 GPU effects, part B (EFF-5)
40 more effects run on the GPU (236 in all, with M13.22's 30), each checked against the CPU oracle (≤ 1/255 at
8 bpc, ≤ 1e-3 at 32 bpc) directly on a buffer (full and half resolution, adjustment) and
@@ -767,7 +1031,7 @@ composited at 8 and 32 bpc:
default to the layer). Shatter's wireframe views and Foam's User Defined texture,
Environment Map and flow-map preview render on the CPU.
## Update: M13.28 GPU effects, part C (EFF-5)
### Update: M13.28 GPU effects, part C (EFF-5)
37 more effects run on the GPU, each checked against the CPU oracle (≤ 1/255 at 8 bpc, ≤ 1e-3 at
32 bpc) directly on a buffer with masks, another layer and an audio track (full and half
@@ -799,7 +1063,7 @@ resolution, adjustment) and composited at 8 and 32 bpc:
of the pixels even at low magnification, WGSL has no f64 and Metal's fast math defeats
double-f32 emulation.
## Update: M13.29 GPU effects, part D (EFF-5)
### Update: M13.29 GPU effects, part D (EFF-5)
7 more effects run on the GPU (280 in all, with M13.28's 37), and five CPU fallbacks are gone. Each case is
checked against the CPU oracle (≤ 1/255 at 8 bpc, ≤ 1e-3 at 32 bpc) directly on a buffer (full
@@ -829,7 +1093,7 @@ are pinned bit for bit by golden hashes (`crates/effects/tests/particle_golden.r
CPU solves the inverse map from the geometry alone and the GPU samples along it, so the chain
stays on the GPU without a readback.
## Update: M13.30 web depth and polish
### Update: M13.30 web depth and polish
- **GPU in the browser's job workers** (WEB-1): each job worker opens its own WebGPU device
(deferred readbacks) like the frame workers. The Render Queue's export and the analyses'
@@ -851,7 +1115,7 @@ are pinned bit for bit by golden hashes (`crates/effects/tests/particle_golden.r
(default 256)}`; `templates.create {projectPath?, footageDir?}` extracts it.
- **ICC A2B0 profiles** in View ▸ Simulate Output ▸ My Custom RGB (see above).
## Highest-value gaps, in order
### Highest-value gaps, in order
1. ~~On-canvas text editing and per-character styles~~ (landed: M9.9–M9.10).
2. ~~Effect Controls widgets: angle dial, point crosshair, eyedropper, curves and levels editors.~~ (second wave, 2 October)
@@ -882,3 +1146,16 @@ missing was interactive tooling, settings stored but not rendered, about 69 disa
and the large systems (tracking, puppet, paint, roto). All of those have landed since; one menu
entry stays disabled on purpose (Import ▸ Vanishing Point), and what is left is listed at the
top of this page and in items 16–18 above.
## Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Readiness-by-audience table: hours to ≈ 95% for each of the three numbers; the full number stays an additive weighted sum (unchanged) |
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Added mainstream practitioner (≈ 47%) and essentials user (≈ 52%) numbers with weights, discounts and GitHub user evidence; wrote down how the full ready number is built (unchanged at ≈ 45%) |
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Stage checked against the core-workflow alpha gate: passes, still alpha |
| 2026-10-10 | major | Full re-measure against After Effects 2026 26.5 (installed bundle, 26.2–26.5 release notes, repository counts); two numbers (breadth ≈ 91%, ready ≈ 45%); feature-area and dimension tables with Opus 5.5 hours; `docs/parity.md` merged in as the appendix and its stale per-area table superseded |
| 2026-10-05 | minor | Checklist updated for M3.9–M4.12 (as `docs/parity.md`) |
| 2026-10-04 | major | Checklist audit at `d39c0e8`: ≈ 99% weighted breadth, 89 / 3 / 0 of 92 |
| 2026-10-02 | major | First audit: ≈ 64% weighted breadth |
docs/ui-parity.md
+47
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@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
# UI parity
> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-10 · **Change:** major (first UI parity checklist against After Effects 2026 26.5) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026
How closely EffectCraft's interaction matches After Effects: tools, handles, snapping, nudging,
modifier keys, shortcuts, drag behaviour, numeric entry, panels, context menus and feel. Evidence
is the code at `origin/main` 1446e27, the 42 scripted UI test files in `crates/ui-egui/tests`
(real pointer and keyboard events, run headless), [fidelity/workflow-checks.md](fidelity/workflow-checks.md)
and the issue tracker. After Effects was not driven for this pass, so "same as After Effects" means
"matches its documentation and users have not reported a difference".
**Overall ≈ 65%** (estimated): the shape of the interface is After Effects' (menus, panels,
workspaces, shortcuts), and the scripted tests cover many interactions, but users keep finding
feel and platform differences, and the 26.x interface changes are not in yet.
| Area | Status | % | Evidence and gaps |
|---|---|---:|---|
| Menu bar | After Effects' menus, order, submenus and labels; native on macOS; keyboard-operable in-window bar | 95% | 587 entries in `crates/engine/src/menus.rs`; Adobe-service entries omitted by design; `ui_menus` tests (#279) |
| Panels and workspaces | Every After Effects panel; all standard workspaces; drag-to-dock, tabs, floating panels, maximise | 75% | `ui_tabs`, `ui_panels`; dropping a panel on a stacked panel doesn't make a tab (#302); stacked-panel headers (#301); saved workspaces don't persist (#320); no panels on a second monitor (#486) |
| Timeline | Switches, modes, parent & link, twirl-downs, reveal shortcuts (U, UU, P, S, R, T, A, E, M, F, Alt+Shift…), pick whips, graph editor, work area, markers | 75% | `ui_keyframes`, `ui_timeline_*`; Graph Editor jitter and hidden buttons (#456, #457); rotation can't go negative by dragging (#569); bulk keyframing (#355); expand precomps in place (#601); Proportional Scrubbing (26.2) missing |
| Composition viewer | Selection, handles with direction-aware cursors, rulers, guides, grids, snapping, channels, exposure, region of interest, snapshots, 3D views, Spacebar hand | 70% | `ui_viewer`, `ui_viewers`; Cmd/Ctrl +/− doesn't zoom (#570); inaccurate snapping (#352); anchor point grab on Linux (#492); no 3D transform gizmos (#392, #347); percentage guides (26.5); copy frame to clipboard (26.3) |
| Tools panel | All After Effects tools; long-press flyouts; Tool Creates Shape / Mask; Fill / Stroke options | 80% | #213, #227 fixed; pen and vertex tools on motion paths (#553) |
| Nudging and modifiers | Arrow nudge (1 px, Shift 10 px), Alt/Option duplicates and slips, Shift constrains | 75% | #290 nudging fixed; Linux multi-layer edits (#491) |
| Numeric entry | Scrubbable values, typed entry with Tab / Shift+Tab, angle revolutions, Escape cancels, non-finite rejected | 85% | `ui_angles`, `ui_inline_edit` (#93, #141, #361); rename arrows on Linux (#488) |
| Effect Controls | After Effects' twirl-downs, angle dial, point crosshair, eyedropper, curves/levels editors, effect menu on right-click | 70% | `ui_effect_controls`, `ui_fx_editors`; 26.5 rebuilt this panel with icon controls and effect colour labels, not matched |
| Context menus | Layer, property, Project, Timeline empty area, work area, labels with colours | 80% | `ui_blank_context_menus`; #227, #290, #407 fixed |
| Keyboard shortcuts | After Effects' defaults; Keyboard Shortcuts editor that rebinds and saves sets | 75% | Shortcut editor in Settings; adding shortcuts fails on Linux (#467); requests for more (#428, #336); no shortcuts for scripts |
| Drag and drop | Project → Timeline / viewer / New Comp / Render Queue; effects onto layers; files from the OS | 65% | `ui_drag_drop`; OS drops fail on Wayland (winit) and some Linux setups (#268); multi-file drops (#552, #351); crash dragging over the import dialog (#511) |
| Text editing on canvas | Point and paragraph text, per-character styles, Character / Paragraph panels, OpenType and variable axes | 70% | `ui_text_edit`; paragraph alignment inverted (#316); font search by typing (#583); toolbar font options (#550); variable-font filter (26.3) |
| Preview feel | Spacebar / Numpad 0 previews, RAM preview, cache bars, adaptive resolution | 55% | `ui_ram_preview`, `ui_live_preview`; stutter (#595, #304), scrubbing lag (#329), Shift+Space default (#551) |
| Home screen, Learn, templates | Home with recent projects, template gallery, interactive Learn tutorials | 70% | Layout nitpicks (#581); Home literals untranslated (#574) |
| Quick Apply (26.2) | Search to apply effects, presets or commands | partial | A command palette exists; not After Effects' Quick Apply |
| Accessibility | AccessKit enabled; focus labels tested | 20% | No screen-reader pass, keyboard-navigation audit or contrast check |
| UI scale | Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ UI Scale 75–200% | beyond | After Effects follows the system's scaling (#284) |
## Estimate
**≈ 60–120 h**: the open interaction issues above (25–45 h, about 0.2–0.5 h each with a scripted
test), 3D gizmos 8–15 h, multi-monitor panels 10–20 h, the 26.x interface changes 10–20 h, an
accessibility pass 15–30 h. Checking feel against After Effects needs the owner's Mac with After
Effects running; most of the rest parallelises.
## Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | major | First UI parity checklist |