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	257 of 298 After Effects 2026 effects by name (86%); ≈ 70% allowing for simplified implementations
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: Roto Brush and Refine Edge, the 3D camera tracker, Advanced 3D (models, PBR, image-based lighting), the Warp Stabilizer and mask-tracking UI on top of the new tracking library, a JavaScript scripting object model, the missing effect categories (3D Channel, Immersive Video, OCIO), native macOS menus, and wasm threads.

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	76%	3.3	a JavaScript scripting object model
Shapes	68%	3.9	taper and wave strokes (pen tool for shape paths and vertex editing landed in M6.5)
Compositions	67%	7.4	marker dialog, flowchart, Essential Graphics
Animation	65%	10.4	puppet, Wiggler/Smoother/Motion Sketch (motion-path handles and the graph editor transform box landed in M5.8)
Text	≈ 85%	1.5	vertical type is basic (upright characters, no tate-chu-yoko), no OpenType feature panel, no text on 3D bevels; 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	58%	20.5	Advanced 3D (models, PBR, image-based light), 3D camera tracker, multi-view layouts
Effects	58%	13.6	Effect Controls widgets (angle dial, point crosshair, eyedropper, curves), GPU versions of more effects, 41 missing effects
Interface	55%	10.4	drag-to-dock and floating panels, preferences, native macOS menus (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	52%	10.0	Roto Brush, variable-width mask feather points (mask tracking and Mask Interpolation landed in M6.6)
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, Subspace Warp's mesh warp and rolling-shutter repair (point tracker, mask tracking and Warp Stabilizer landed in M6.x / M12.5)
Paint	0%	4.0	Brush, Clone Stamp, Eraser

Effects still missing

Immersive Video (all 12), 3D Channel (all 8, including Cryptomatte), Color Stabilizer and the five OCIO transforms, CC Flo Motion, Liquify, Rolling Shutter Repair, Compressor, Distortion and Gate (audio), Camera-Shake Deblur, CC Radial Blur, CC Hair, Particle Playground, Keylight (our Screen Key stands in), Color Profile Converter and the 3D Camera Tracker. Boris FX Mocha and Cineware are third-party and not counted.

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, roto, Advanced 3D and GPU rendering.