Project X ray

Project X-ray

Opening someone else's project? Ask the AI to X-ray it: "X-ray this project and tell me how it's built."

ae_project_xray reads the whole project without changing anything: no undo step, no temporary items, nothing in the interface changes. It explains how the project works rather than tidying it.

What it reports

Section	What you learn
render	Which comps the render queue actually renders and the precomps each one pulls in (and how deep); comps nothing renders; comps used in many places
expressions	What every expression reads; which layers the rig hangs on; links across comps; links that are already broken; links that will break when a layer is renamed or reordered, or when the project is opened in another After Effects language; expressions with errors
missing	Missing plug-ins, footage, fonts, proxies, placeholders
footage	How the footage is specified; frame rates that don't match their comps; very large sources
weight	What makes it slow to render: heavy effects, effects on disabled, shy or guide layers, high motion blur samples, the 3D renderer, frame blending, time remapping, full-length adjustment layers, footage scaled far down

You get a plain-language answer. The AI gets precise locations (comp › layer › property) to act on if you ask it to.

Narrowing it down

Option	Meaning	Default
sections	Only these sections	all
comps	Only these comps and the precomps they pull in (ids, exact names, or "active")	whole project
limit	Longest list per finding (1–200); the result counts what was cut	25
maxLayers	Stop reading after this many layers	20,000
timeBudgetSeconds	Stop reading after this long (5–600)	90

Big projects are read within the time budget. When the answer is partial, it says so.

Related

• ae_project_health is a shorter check: missing footage, fonts and effects, expression errors, unused footage, empty comps and folders, duplicate comp names.
• Preflight uses the same collector for its project checks, limited to the delivered comp and its precomps.
• X-ray works in Read-only mode and doesn't wait for approval in Ask mode.

In the chat

In AI apps that show views (for example Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, VS Code and Cursor), the result also comes as a view in the chat. See In-chat views.