Chat in After Effects

Chat in After Effects

You can talk to the AI from inside After Effects. The Surehand panel's chat runs an AI agent you already have installed and signed in to: Codex, Claude Code or Antigravity. Your own subscription runs the model. Surehand never stores or handles a key or a sign-in: each agent keeps its own.

For each chat the agent gets Surehand's tools as its only tools, and it works on the open project.

Opening the chat

• Click the chat button (the speech bubble) in the panel's header, or ☰ › Chat with your AI app.
• To make the chat what you see first when After Effects starts: ☰ › Settings › Panel opens on › Chat. Activity (the default) opens on the feed. Stored as "panelOpensOn": "chat" in config.json.

When more than one agent is ready, choose one under Chat with before the first message. New chat starts over (and is the way to switch to another agent). While the agent works, Send becomes Stop.

Setting up an agent

If no agent is ready, the chat shows AI apps for chat instead: each agent with its state.

State	What to do
Ready	Nothing. It is installed and signed in.
Not signed in	Open Terminal (PowerShell on Windows) and run claude auth login or codex login; for Antigravity, start agy once and sign in. Then press Check again. Codex installed with the ChatGPT / Codex desktop app: sign in there.
Not installed	The screen says how to install it.

Antigravity has no way to add a server for one session, so the first time the chat asks you to Connect: it adds Surehand to Antigravity's MCP servers and one allow rule for Surehand's tools, after a backup. Disconnect and the uninstaller remove both. Codex and Claude Code settings are left alone: the options apply to the chat's run only.

Nothing bypasses your controls

The agent's calls are ordinary AI calls:

• Full / Ask / Read-only, Pause AI and the activity log apply exactly as for any AI app.
• In Ask mode the approval card moves into the chat while it is open. It is the same card with the same answers; Esc denies.
• The agent's built-in tools (shell, file edits, web) are switched off or not allowed.
• The agent's own approval prompt for Surehand's tools is off, so Surehand's mode is the one that decides.

Every call the agent makes is also in the panel's feed and ☰ › Activity history.

Honest limits

• Only Codex, Claude Code and Antigravity are supported in the panel. Other AI apps work as usual from their own window (see Connecting AI apps).
• Antigravity's output format isn't documented yet. Surehand reads the format Antigravity's CLI 1.4 writes, so a later Antigravity version may need a Surehand update.
• The chat needs the server installed with an installer (.pkg, Setup .exe or the zip), like the other ☰ screens that run it.

Design notes, command lines and what each agent's stream looks like: docs/chat-in-ae.md.