effectcraft/docs/parity.md

# Parity with After Effects

How close EffectCraft is to After Effects 2026, feature by feature, and how much work is left.
Audited against the code at commit `5273f1b` (2 October 2026). Every feature in our catalog was
graded from the code itself: a disabled menu entry, or a setting that is stored but never
rendered, does not count as done.

## Summary

| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| **Feature parity, weighted by tier** (P0 ×3, P1 ×2, P2 ×1) | **≈ 64%** |
| Feature parity, unweighted | ≈ 58% |
| P0 (it isn't After Effects without it) | ≈ 75% |
| P1 (professional daily use) | ≈ 38% |
| P2 (long tail) | ≈ 17% |
| Features done / partial / missing | 18 / 60 / 14 of 92 |
| **Effects** | **297 of 298** After Effects 2026 effects by name (99.7%, after M9.11 and Warp Stabilizer; was 257); only the 3D Camera Tracker is left |
| Remaining work | ≈ **167 agent-hours** (139 h of features + ≈ 20% for 1:1 polish against After Effects) |
| Wall-clock estimate | ≈ **42–50 hours** with five agents working in parallel and one integrating; ≈ 31–35 h for P0 + P1 only |

"Agent-hours" are hours of one autonomous coding agent (Claude Opus 5.5) working in its own git
worktree with tests. The estimate is calibrated on this repository's own history: Classic 3D
(cameras, lights, shadows, depth of field, views, tools) took one agent about 2.7 h; timeline
depth (graph editor, keyframe dialogs, time remapping, pen and masks) about 2.3 h; 85 effects
about 1.2 h; the After Effects menu bar about 1.3 h; layer styles about 0.6 h; the web build
about 0.8 h. What is left is harder on average (tracking, roto, puppet, GPU, Advanced 3D), and
sequential chains (tracker → mask tracking → Warp Stabilizer → 3D camera tracker; GPU
compositor → GPU effects) limit how much can run in parallel.

Work in progress at the time of the audit, not yet counted: motion tracking, preferences and the
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`)

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,
auto-save and crash recovery, Lottie import and export, Effect Controls widgets (angle dial,
point crosshair, eyedropper, curves and levels editors, effect copy/paste) and 20 more menu
commands landed. Re-scoring only the features they touch:

| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Feature parity, weighted | 63.7% | **≈ 70%** |
| P0 / P1 / P2 | 75% / 38% / 17% | 78% / 56% / 17% |
| Remaining, audit estimate | 167 agent-hours | ≈ 141 agent-hours |

**Calibration.** The audit priced this wave at about 21 agent-hours; five agents delivered it in
about 1.5 hours of wall-clock time (roughly 6 agent-hours of actual work), though some features
landed at 80–90% rather than fully done. So the per-feature estimates above are conservative.
Remaining wall-clock time with five parallel agents is therefore somewhere between **≈ 12–15
hours** at the pace observed so far and **≈ 35–40 hours** if the audit's figures hold. The
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

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),
on-canvas text editing with per-character styles and paragraph settings, render fidelity (8/16/32
bpc, Rec.709/Rec.2020/P3 working spaces and linear blending, frame blending with optical flow,
collapse transformations, slip edits), a GPU compositor with 16 GPU effects, Wiggler/Smoother/
Motion Sketch, the marker dialog, precompose options and the comp navigator, Project panel folder
moves/rename/columns/thumbnails, drag-and-drop docking with floating panels, and the tracking
library groundwork for mask tracking and Warp Stabilizer.

| Measure | Morning | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Feature parity, weighted | 63.7% | **≈ 79%** |
| Unweighted | 57.8% | ≈ 74% |
| P0 / P1 / P2 | 75% / 38% / 17% | 87% / 67% / 21% |
| Remaining (audit-scale agent-hours) | ≈ 167 | ≈ 100 |
| Wall clock, five parallel agents | 42–50 h | **≈ 8–10 h at today's measured pace; ≈ 25 h by the audit's conservative figures** |

What is left is concentrated in large systems: the 3D camera tracker,
the Warp Stabilizer and mask-tracking UI on top of
the new tracking library, and wasm threads. (The missing effect categories, 3D Channel, Immersive
Video and OCIO, landed in M9.11; the scripting object model in M14.4; Roto Brush and Refine Edge in
M6.7; native macOS menus, the Composition Flowchart, Timeline column/search depth, the Home screen
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.)

## By area

| Area | Weighted parity | Remaining (agent-hours) | Biggest gaps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Layers | 88% | 4.8 | frame blending, collapse transformations, slip edit |
| Output | 90% | 3.0 | multiple output modules, pre-render (WebM with VP9 alpha + Opus and WAV/AIFF audio-only landed: VP9 is intra-only, Opus CELT-only) |
| Audio | 85% | 0.5 | audio to keyframes |
| Import | 88% | 2.0 | AI/EPS/PDF vector footage, PSD smart objects and 3D layers (PSD as footage/composition/retain layer sizes, SVG footage and Create Shapes from Vector Layer landed) |
| Automation | ≈ 90% | 0.8 | scripting covers the documented core object model (AUT-2, M14.4: `app`, project items, comps, layers, properties and keyframes, text documents, markers, render queue, Script Console, `effectcraft-cli script`, MCP `run_script`); still missing: ScriptUI panels/dialogs, `.jsxbin`, sockets |
| Shapes | 68% | 3.9 | taper and wave strokes (pen tool for shape paths and vertex editing landed in M6.5) |
| Compositions | 72% | 6.0 | Essential Graphics panel (the marker dialog and Composition Flowchart landed) |
| Animation | 65% | 10.4 | puppet, Wiggler/Smoother/Motion Sketch (motion-path handles and the graph editor transform box landed in M5.8) |
| Text | ≈ 86% | 1.3 | vertical type is basic (upright characters, no tate-chu-yoko), no OpenType feature panel, no extruded strokes (extruded, bevelled text landed in M7.6); per-character styles, paragraph settings, on-canvas editing and the `sourceText` style API landed (M9.9–M9.10) |
| Web | 60% | 2.5 | threads, browser storage, audio |
| 3D | 72% | 12.0 | 3D camera tracker, multi-view layouts, Advanced 3D motion blur and blend modes, cameras/lights from models; Advanced 3D (glTF/OBJ models, primitives, extruded text and shapes, PBR, image-based light, shadow maps, GPU rasteriser) landed in M7.4–M7.6 |
| Effects | ≈ 75% | 5.0 | GPU versions of more effects and the 3D Camera Tracker (every other After Effects effect exists since M9.11 and M12.5) |
| Interface | 70% | 6.0 | Timeline horizontal scrolling of many columns, a richer Learn area (native macOS menu bar, Timeline columns/search/reveal-add, Home screen with recent projects and all AE workspaces landed; viewer rulers/snapping/channels/snapshots landed in M0.13) |
| Project | 53% | 8.1 | 8/16/32-bit pipeline and colour management, auto-save, proxies, folder moves |
| Masks & roto | 68% | 6.0 | variable-width mask feather points, Roto Brush's learned (3.0) segmentation model (mask tracking and Mask Interpolation landed in M6.6; Roto Brush & Refine Edge with graph-cut segmentation, flow propagation, edge matting, decontamination and Freeze in M6.7) |
| Preview | 62% | 5.0 | GPU 3D and adjustment layers (persistent disk cache with the blue cache bar landed; region of interest, snapshots, exposure and Fast Previews landed in M0.13) |
| Tracking | ≈ 70% | 4.0 | 3D camera tracker, face tracking and Subspace Warp's mesh warp (Rolling Shutter Repair landed in M9.11; point tracker, mask tracking and Warp Stabilizer landed in M6.x / M12.5) |
| Paint | 0% | 4.0 | Brush, Clone Stamp, Eraser |

## Effects still missing

The 3D Camera Tracker (built on the tracking library by other work). Boris FX
Mocha and Cineware are third-party and not counted.

### Added in M9.11 (39 effects)

| Category | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 3D Channel | 3D Channel Extract, Cryptomatte, Depth Matte, Depth of Field, EXtractoR, Fog 3D, ID Matte, IDentifier | Read auxiliary channels: multi-layer OpenEXR (any `layer.channel`, Cryptomatte manifests from the header) or the compositor's own depth / layer-ID / normal / UV / Cryptomatte pass for precomps of 3D comps. |
| Immersive Video | VR Blur, VR Chromatic Aberrations, VR Color Gradients, VR Converter, VR De-Noise, VR Digital Glitch, VR Fractal Noise, VR Glow, VR Plane to Sphere, VR Rotate Sphere, VR Sharpen, VR Sphere To Plane | Seam-aware equirectangular processing (wrap-around, pole continuation, latitude-scaled filters), mono / over-under / side-by-side layouts; VR Converter between equirectangular, cube maps (4:3, 3:2, 6:1), sphere map and 2D. |
| Color Correction | OCIO CDL / Color Space / Display / File / Look Transform, Color Stabilizer | Built-in minimal OCIO-style config (ACES2065-1, ACEScg, ACEScct, sRGB, Rec.709, Rec.2020, Display P3, linear variants, XYZ) from published matrices and transfer functions; `.cube` / `.3dl` / `.csp` LUTs and ASC `.cc` / `.ccc` / `.cdl`. Custom `.ocio` config files are not read yet. |
| Distort | CC Flo Motion, Liquify, Rolling Shutter Repair | Liquify strokes are effect data replayed into a displacement mesh (`liquify.stroke` / `liquify.clear` commands; no interactive viewer brush yet). Rolling Shutter Repair uses the KLT tracker. |
| Blur & Sharpen | Camera-Shake Deblur, CC Radial Blur | Deblur substitutes aligned patches from sharper neighbouring frames. |
| Audio | Compressor, Distortion, Gate | Applied in the mixdown like the other audio effects. |
| Simulation | CC Hair, Particle Playground | Particle Playground: cannon, grid, layer exploder, layer map, gravity, repel, wall, persistent property mapper (no Particle Exploder, text particles or ephemeral mapper yet). |
| Keying | Key Light | The full Keylight 1.2 control set under a generic name ("Keylight" is a vendor trademark); `lookup("Keylight (1.2)")` finds it. |
| Utility | Color Profile Converter | Our colour spaces and ACES; rendering intents (perceptual gamut compression, relative / absolute colorimetric, saturation). |
| Obsolete | mocha shape | Mocha's export format is not public: reads a documented JSON shape format instead. |

## 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.
3. ~~Viewer basics: snapping, rulers, channel view, snapshots, exposure, a drawable region of interest.~~ (M0.13)
4. ~~A GPU (wgpu) compositor, then GPU effects~~ (M12.2: 2D compositing and 16 GPU effects; 3D runs
   and adjustment layers still composite on the CPU).
5. ~~Pen tool for shape paths, shape vertex editing, free transform~~ (M6.5); the Layer viewer.
6. ~~Motion-path handles in the viewer; graph editor transform box and snapping.~~ (M5.8)
7. Point tracking and stabilization (in progress).
8. Frame blending, collapse transformations, slip edit.
9. A real 8/16/32-bit pipeline with linear blending and colour management.
10. ~~Drag-to-dock and floating panels, saved workspaces, native macOS menus.~~
11. Auto-save, crash recovery, recent projects (in progress).
12. Expression gaps: `sampleImage`, `footage()` (the `sourceText` style API landed in M9.9).
13. ~~Lottie, WebM, SVG and PSD import~~ (landed; a disk cache too).
14. Puppet and paint tools (in progress).
15. Preferences and a shortcut editor that can rebind (in progress); real Wiggler, Smoother and Motion Sketch; the marker dialog.

The engine underneath (keyframes, expressions, shape operators, text animators, Classic 3D, all
38 blend modes, the render queue) is deep. Most of what is missing is interactive tooling in the
viewer, settings that are stored but not yet rendered, about 69 menu entries that are still
disabled, and the large systems: tracking, puppet, paint and roto (Advanced 3D landed in M7.4–M7.6).