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.

By area

Area	Weighted parity	Remaining (agent-hours)	Biggest gaps
Layers	88%	4.8	frame blending, collapse transformations, slip edit
Output	85%	4.2	multiple output modules, pre-render, WebM, audio-only
Audio	85%	0.5	audio to keyframes
Import	78%	4.5	PSD, SVG as shapes, Lottie
Automation	76%	3.3	a JavaScript scripting object model
Shapes	68%	3.9	pen tool for shape paths, vertex editing, taper and wave strokes
Compositions	67%	7.4	marker dialog, flowchart, Essential Graphics
Animation	65%	10.4	motion-path handles in the viewer, graph editor transform box, puppet, Wiggler/Smoother/Motion Sketch
Text	63%	5.8	on-canvas editing with a cursor, per-character styles, paragraph spacing and indents
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	56%	14.6	Effect Controls widgets (angle dial, point crosshair, eyedropper, curves), GPU effects, 41 missing effects
Interface	55%	10.4	drag-to-dock and floating panels, viewer rulers/snapping/channels/snapshots, preferences, native macOS menus
Project	53%	8.1	8/16/32-bit pipeline and colour management, auto-save, proxies, folder moves
Masks & roto	44%	13.0	mask tracking, Roto Brush, free transform and RotoBezier
Preview	43%	8.1	GPU compositor, disk cache, region of interest, snapshots and exposure
Tracking	0%	13.0	point tracker, Warp Stabilizer, mask and face tracking
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, Warp Stabilizer, 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.
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.
4. A GPU (wgpu) compositor, then GPU effects.
5. Pen tool for shape paths, shape vertex editing, the Layer viewer, free transform and RotoBezier.
6. Motion-path handles in the viewer; graph editor transform box and snapping.
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, the sourceText style API, footage().
13. Lottie (in progress), WebM, SVG and PSD import.
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.