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What's new in Altar

Change log

New Chat capabilities, Forge tools, Vault workflows, fixes, and production improvements, newest first.

0.6.2 - 2026-09-28

Added

  • Type exact easing values. Click the values under the Easing graph to enter four numbers separated by commas, or paste a cubic-bezier().
  • Tidy the Easing presets. Edit presets hides built-in presets you don't use and deletes your own, with Undo. Right-click any preset for its menu, and drag the divider to give the graph or the presets more room.
  • Altar Gradient, a native gradient effect. Linear, radial and angle gradients with keyframable color stops, plus a button that picks new colors for you. Find it under Effect > Altar > Altar Gradient. The Altar installer adds it.
  • Parametric gradients follow the layer's content. In Parametric mode, set Orientation, Start Position, End Position and Angle. The gradient spans what you can see on the layer, so on a text layer it runs from the first letter to the last instead of across the whole composition.
  • Create localised compositions through AE Sheets and Binance Localiser. AI assistants can inspect a source composition, prepare editable version recipes, replace text and nested compositions, and generate the finished version through an open panel.

Changed

  • The Easing graph keeps overshoot in view. Drag a handle past the edge and the graph zooms out so you can still see it. Handles follow your pointer instead of jumping.
  • Easing reads the curve between two keyframes. Select a segment and Easing reads the ease leaving the first keyframe and entering the next, for each dimension. It tells you which keys it skipped, such as hold keys.
  • The installer asks for your Mac password. Altar's effects go in the plug-ins folder After Effects shares across versions, which needs admin rights. The panel still installs for your account only.
  • Update notices say what an update includes. When an update contains a new version of an Altar effect, the notice names it. Click Run installer, enter your password, and restart After Effects when it finishes.
  • The installer reminds you to restart After Effects. Its last page says so, since After Effects only picks up new panels and effects when it starts.

Fixed

  • Easing reads some curves correctly. Certain curves read as wildly wrong values, and Apply now explains a bad selection instead of failing.
  • Chat handles a stopped or slow After Effects more safely. Chat now waits up to 30 seconds for its turn in the queue, stops sending commands when you press Stop, and says when a command may still be running in After Effects instead of reporting it as failed.
  • Project reads and searches read clearly in Chat. Reading the project or searching it now shows "Read project · N comps" or "Searched project · N hits" (marked partial when a search stops early) instead of "Ran script" with raw JSON.

0.6.0 - 2026-09-17

Added

  • Altar, Altar Chat, and Altar Vault ship in one installer. Window lists those three names. Settings stays hidden. The local MCP binary is in the Mac payload.

Changed

  • One production build. Team Preview is no longer a separate package or update channel. If you were on Team Preview, reinstall from motionaltar.com/download. This first 0.6.0 update is installer-only so After Effects registers Chat, Vault, and Bridge. Staging still keeps the full Forge catalog; public Forge stays at the certified 38 tools.

0.5.2 - 2026-09-16

Added

  • All 14 Keyframe tools are included in the public beta. Align, move, snap, reverse, clone, clean up and copy keyframe values with standalone tool names. Moving keys to the playhead preserves timing across the selection; moving to in/out points preserves timing within each layer.
  • Parent to Last is available in team preview. Parent selected children to the last selected layer, preserving that layer's existing parent and rejecting cycles before making changes.
  • GPT-6 Astra is available in Chat. Choose it under OpenAI in Settings or the composer. Astra supports reasoning and After Effects tool calls, and Sol now uses its explicit model ID.
  • AI assistants can receive frame previews directly. MCP captures include images alongside original file paths, with options to crop, resize or combine frames into a contact sheet. Chat resizes oversized captures instead of dropping them, and preview dimensions stay within limits.
  • Find and run commands from one search. Command Search includes available tools, widget actions, expressions, effects, presets, menu commands and extensions. Star favourites or rerun recent commands without adding each one to your canvas.
  • Save named canvas layouts. Save, switch, rename and delete layouts, with prompts to save or discard unsaved changes. Layout actions are available in the edit toolbar and right-click menu.
  • Guided AI setup. Connect an external AI assistant or configure built-in Chat, with connection checks and clearer setup feedback.
  • Replace fonts within a chosen scope. Chat can target selected text layers, a composition, its nested compositions or the whole project. Choose an installed face or preserve matching styles, with clarification when a replacement is ambiguous and receipts showing what changed or was skipped.
  • New tools can appear automatically in existing layouts. The Automatically add new tools setting places them in a New in release group for you to try.
  • AI-generated Forge Scripts and Widgets through Chat and MCP. Save complete tools into Your tools, edit layouts in a basic builder, Apply only when you mean to change After Effects, and restore the previous version in one step. Automatic tests exist only for grouped stagger and captured native text, and they are labelled as fixture evidence until live AE verification.
  • Choose a theme in Settings → Appearance. The dropdown shows each theme's name and palette, including Catppuccin, Graphite, Claude and Darkmatter.

Changed

  • Chat keeps routine details out of the way. Inspection and activity details are collapsed, and successful turns no longer repeat completion or snapshot notices. Failures remain visible.
  • Find Widget Builder in Add Block search. Search by name or browse the General section to create a widget and arrange its controls.
  • Keyframe and Layers tools have dedicated icons. Layers tools also use clearer names.
  • The website has an updated Altar mark and favicons. The navigation mark appears on mobile and animates on hover, respecting reduced-motion preferences.
  • Chat has a new layout with Altar's existing colours. A compact two-row composer groups attachments, model selection and Send/Stop. Suggested next steps fill an editable draft, and conversation history moves into a sidebar that opens on demand in narrow panels.
  • The Bridge stays available when Chat closes. A background host handles After Effects commands for Altar's panels and external AI assistants without keeping the Chat panel open.
  • The homepage shows Altar in action. Added a product demo, simplified the headline and waitlist copy, and removed the introductory animation.
  • Edit mode is easier to use. A thicker panel outline marks edit mode, and three extra rows of temporary scroll space let you reach items behind the layout toolbar.
  • Newly added items are easier to find. The canvas scrolls to and highlights inserted blocks and groups. Adding a block to a collapsed group opens it.
  • Command Search fits smaller layouts. Resize it down to 2 × 1 units. Its name label is hidden by default because the search button already identifies it.
  • Chat settings use compact sections. Provider setup, instructions and project memory have a simpler layout with clearer controls.
  • Themes style Forge and Settings together. Presets change panel backgrounds, default icon colors, corner rounding and system font stacks. Chat and Vault keep their default appearance.

Fixed

  • The composer's model dropdown opens inside After Effects. It now uses Altar's shared dropdown. Pressing Enter in a local model name no longer submits a chat message.
  • Empty chats no longer show Jump to latest. Selecting welcome text or scrolling before the first message no longer puts the conversation into a paused scroll state.
  • Composer state stays with the right conversation. Switching conversations clears the composer, while resizing the panel preserves the current draft and attachments.
  • Connection status recovers after Chat reloads. Reopening Chat restores connection evidence, and Reconnect can retry a failed Bridge host without leaving stale checks queued.
  • Bridge commands fail clearly when the host stops responding. Queued work is serialized across panels, expired requests are discarded before execution, and interrupted requests report a failure instead of hanging indefinitely.
  • Incompatible Bridge versions are reported before commands run. External assistants and Chat receive update guidance for incompatible installs and a clear error for unsupported operations.
  • Updates include the background Bridge host. The installer registers the new host, updates reload it alongside the visible panels, and preview update checks accept installer-only releases.
  • Widget overlays are easier to read and dismiss. Improved contrast and narrow titles, added space around overlays for backdrop clicks, and prevented an info tooltip appearing on launch.
  • Saved question answers stay visible when an error is long. Error details scroll without hiding the answers already submitted to Chat.
  • Layout menu keyboard controls work inside After Effects.
  • Widget accents follow the selected theme instead of staying purple. Default hover and selected states inherit the theme, including Easing's Apply button and curve selection, Slide In, and Text Point. Explicit per-widget color overrides remain unchanged.

0.5.0 - 2026-09-02

Added

  • Public beta builds open with 23 certified Tools. The complete Selection family ships beside Anchor + Align + Distribute, Easing, Color Swatches, Primitives, Text Point, and Pre-render. User-authored Tools remain available, while staging and team-preview keep the full built-in catalog.

Changed

  • Hidden preview Tools survive public editing. Moving, resizing, grouping, resetting and reloading the public canvas preserve compatible hidden layout data so it returns in team-preview builds.

Fixed

  • Certified Tool evidence is bound to the installed release bytes. The smoke check now requires a freshly built, signed and notarized public package whose embedded profile and source commit match the candidate under test.

0.4.0 - 2026-08-26

Added

  • Vault has one Browse view for Local and Team libraries. Filter by library, category, favourites or tags, search across the combined catalog and control card details from Settings.
  • Vault items carry clearer publishing metadata. Save Item supports an explicit display name, fixed category and tags, and Local items can be moved into a Team library without rebuilding them.
  • Chat can visually verify reference-driven work. Vision-capable models capture the result after changing a composition, compare the rendered pixels and get at most one bounded correction pass.
  • Send Altar a picture. Attach images to a message from the picker, drop them onto the composer, or paste straight from your clipboard with Cmd+V or right-click - a reference frame, a screenshot of the look you are after, a still from something you liked. Pasting anything that is not an image still pastes as ordinary text.
  • The conversation follows the reply while you are at the bottom, and stops when you are not. Scroll up to read something earlier and Altar leaves you there instead of dragging you back down mid-stream. A Jump to latest button appears while you are held back, and returns you to the live reply when you want it.

Changed

  • Vault browsing is faster and more predictable. Results use deterministic ranking and alphabetical ordering, responsive layouts keep useful card space, and navigation exposes the active scope more clearly.
  • Chat reports execution outcomes more reliably. Successful script receipts are unwrapped, warnings and partial failures stay visible, and feedback transcripts retain outcomes without raw operation payloads.

Fixed

  • Numbered still images stay still images in saved Vault projects. Packaging no longer asks After Effects to reinterpret standalone files as image sequences, preventing invented missing-frame warnings when reopening reduced projects. Genuine image sequences are rejected until Vault can package every frame safely.
  • Local-to-Team moves preserve metadata or stop safely. Legacy categories must be updated before upload, so the Local source is never deleted after silently dropping its category.
  • Visual verification fails closed. Missing, invalid or over-budget frame captures cannot be treated as visible evidence, and Chat cannot make repeated correction passes.

0.3.3 - 2026-08-25

Changed

  • Altar Settings is no longer listed under Window → Extensions. It is a floating window, opened from Forge, Vault or Chat, not a dockable panel. Restart After Effects after updating so the menu refreshes; if a Settings pane is already sitting in your workspace, close it once.
  • The closed beta is macOS-only across every public download path. The download page, installer guide, release assets and update service now expose only the signed macOS package while Windows validation builds remain private to short-lived CI artifacts.

Fixed

  • Unsupported platforms now fail closed. Windows cannot reappear through an older or alternate manifest, and the in-panel updater will not download, stage or reuse an update for an omitted platform.
  • Release promotion validates the exact artifact policy before publishing. A staged manifest with the wrong version, a Windows package or no macOS package is rejected before stable state changes.

0.3.2 - 2026-08-19

Added

  • Chat keeps the current composition visible. A compact Active Comp bar above the composer follows manual viewer changes, panel focus, refreshes and reopenings without activating or restoring a comp.
  • Receipts show exactly which composition an operation reached. They now include the target name and ID, distinguish an explicit target from the Active Comp fallback, disambiguate duplicate names and retain that evidence in chat history.
  • Chat has a lean layer inventory for everyday transform questions. It can read layer names, common transforms and opacity without loading the full property tree, and replayed follow-ups can reuse that inventory without another After Effects read.
  • Chat shows how fresh and trustworthy each answer is. Answers can show which Comp Snapshot they used, when it was captured and how old it is, with a focused Refresh from AE action when you need a current read. Partial, truncated and expression-error Snapshots now carry clear warnings and useful diagnostics instead of looking complete.
  • Completed Chat turns have a compact activity summary. Successful inspection reads fold into a concise, accessible summary, while writes, warnings, refusals and failures remain visible in order.

Changed

  • Chat now offers the latest Claude and OpenAI models. The model picker adds Claude Opus 5, Sonnet 5 and Fable 5, plus the GPT-5.6 family. New installations start on Claude Opus 5; an existing model choice stays exactly where you left it.
  • Chat reports what After Effects actually did, not what its reply claims. Each turn now has a deterministic Completed, Warning, No change or Failed outcome, with recovered diagnostics, the number of undo steps created and a reliable way to continue interrupted work.
  • Requests that name a composition go straight to that composition. Chat passes a supplied name or ID directly to the operation, avoiding project scans and verification reads when its receipt is enough, while still stopping safely when the target is missing or ambiguous.
  • Widget launchers can live inside Groups. Add a Widget's overlay launcher to a Group just like a Button, resize it independently and keep its placement when the panel reopens.
  • Forge modifier shortcuts now follow one consistent contract. Built-in Scripts use the same shortcut labels, icons and behavior across the canvas and Settings, with listeners limited to Tools that actually declare a shortcut.
  • Vault cards now share one responsive layout. Browse, categories, Favourites and Library use the same measured grid and fixed card footprint. Selection and Import actions sit over the preview, so choosing a card no longer stretches its row, and the focus or selection outline reaches every edge.

Fixed

  • Reveal Comp now finds the composition you mean. Forge no longer fails before the action reaches After Effects. When precomp layers are selected it highlights their source compositions in the Project panel; otherwise it highlights the active composition. Forge errors now also include the underlying reason instead of stopping at a generic failure message.
  • Align and Distribute now work on animated layers. Forge writes position changes at the playhead instead of failing on a keyed Position property, and it preserves the Z value of 3D layers.
  • Stopping a Chat turn no longer blocks the next message. Altar now waits for the cancelled model request to finish unwinding before it accepts the next turn, instead of briefly replying that a turn was still in progress after the panel had already returned to its ready state.
  • Chat has stricter guidance for raw expression scripts. Frontier models are now told exactly how After Effects expression newlines must be escaped and to run a full expression-health read before reporting success, reducing false success claims after a raw script write.
  • OpenAI can reason and use Altar's After Effects tools in the same turn. GPT-5.6 requests now use OpenAI's Responses API, fixing the error that appeared when reasoning and function tools were enabled together. OpenAI's server-side response storage remains disabled.
  • Current Claude models use the thinking mode each model expects. Claude 5, Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 4.6 use adaptive thinking with visible summaries, while Haiku 4.5 keeps its supported fixed-budget mode. This prevents newer Claude models rejecting a turn before it begins.
  • Camera-aware placement stays accurate when the camera has moved. Altar now resolves the camera's true world position and direction before solving 3D placement, including one-node and two-node cameras, and refuses an unreadable result instead of guessing whether a point is in front.
  • Writes stop before touching the wrong composition. Creation, property, preset and Vault insert operations verify the expected composition at the mutation boundary, including targeted properties, so a viewer change cannot quietly redirect an already-planned edit.
  • Updates are safe when several Altar panels are open. Staging and applying are serialized across Forge, Chat, Vault and Settings, interrupted or corrupt downloads are cleaned up for a same-session retry, and missing or malformed After Effects version data fails closed.
  • Oversized Chat requests fail cleanly. If an attachment or turn exceeds the local request limit, Chat now explains the limit and stays ready for the next message instead of dropping the connection.
  • Damaged saved Widget launcher sizes recover safely. Legacy or corrupt dimensions are clamped to the supported range while valid wide and tall launchers keep their saved size.
  • Team invitation redemption preserves existing access. Redeeming an invitation can add the new Team without accidentally downgrading a membership or grant the account already holds.
  • Vault catalog refreshes cannot roll back. A delayed or stale publication can no longer replace a newer catalog version that is already live.

0.3.1 - 2026-08-08

Fixed

  • Installing an update finishes in one restart, and no longer stops on an error. When Altar had a new version ready and you restarted After Effects to finish, the panel would open on an error message instead of coming back up. The update itself had gone in correctly and restarting a second time cleared it, but nothing told you that - it just looked like Altar had broken. The cause was the panel still running the old version while its files were being replaced underneath it, so it went looking for pieces that were no longer there. Altar now switches over to the new version the moment the update is applied: one restart, and the "Updated to Altar" confirmation appears straight away. This takes effect for updates installed from 0.3.1 onward - the one that brings you to 0.3.1 still finishes the old way, so give it a second restart if it stops on an error.

0.3.0 - 2026-08-08

Added

  • Altar can tell what you wrote from what an expression made of it. When a property is driven by an expression, a read now reports both the value stored on the property and the value it actually evaluates to, and every read is stamped with the time it was taken. Setting a position to zero and reading back something else is now legible as "the expression is adding this" rather than looking like a failed write. Reads can also be asked for a specific time instead of wherever your playhead happens to be parked.
  • Altar remembers what it worked out about the job. Things it figured out in one chat used to die with that chat: how your rig is wired, which comps are approved, a call you made in the first pass and don't want reopened. Altar can now write those down as short notes, and they live in the project file itself - so they travel with the job through a rename, a save-up to v02, or a hand to another machine. You stay in charge of them: Chat → Settings lists every note with the date it was written, newest first, and you can delete any one of them or clear the lot. Altar can add notes but cannot read them back out or delete them behind your back, and each one shows up in the chat as it's written, so nothing lands invisibly. Notes are treated as hints, never as truth - when a note disagrees with what's actually in your comp, Altar goes with the comp and tells you the note looks out of date.
  • Give Altar standing instructions. Two editors in Chat → Settings: one for rules that apply everywhere ("always work in the comp I have open", "never rename my layers"), and one for rules that belong to the project you have open, saved into that project so they follow it to whoever opens it next. Altar rereads both at the start of every message, so an edit takes effect on your next reply rather than your next session, and your wording is passed through exactly as you typed it and outranks Altar's own judgement. These are yours alone - Altar has no way to write or change them.
  • Find where something is used, anywhere in the project. Ask the questions you actually ask yourself mid-project: where else did I use that wiggle expression, which layers have this effect on them, find every CTRL_ null. Altar searches every comp for layer and asset names, applied effects, and expression text, and hands back a list of where each one lives. It's built to stay responsive on a real agency project: rather than freezing After Effects on a huge one, it returns what it found so far and offers to carry on from where it stopped.
  • Altar can look at the frames it renders. When Altar renders a frame to check its work, it can now actually see the picture rather than just being told a file was written - so "does this look right" is a question it can answer, and a build-check-fix loop closes on its own. Works on Claude and Gemini models. OpenAI models and local models (Ollama, LM Studio) still get the file path only, and Altar says so rather than pretending it looked.
  • Altar thinks before it answers, and you can watch it. On Claude models and Gemini 2.5, Altar now works the problem out before it touches your comp - which layer to read first, what order to build a rig in, whether an ease should be spatial or temporal. While it streams, the status line above the box grows a small arrow: click it to read what it is thinking, or ignore it and it stays out of your way. The thinking is live only - it disappears when the reply lands and is not saved with the chat, so your scrollback stays answers and Receipts rather than a wall of deliberation. OpenAI models also reason harder now, but OpenAI does not hand back what it thought, so there is nothing to show on those - no arrow appears. Local models (Ollama, LM Studio) are left exactly as they were.
  • Altar gets further in one go, and tells you when it runs out of room. A single request can now take far more steps before Altar has to stop, so asking for a whole change - read the comp, make the edits, render a frame to check - usually finishes in one turn instead of stalling half way. If it does run out, it now says so plainly at the end of its reply and you can tell it to continue, rather than handing you a reply that looks finished but isn't. You can move the limit yourself in Chat → Settings, under the model picker: a higher limit lets Altar finish longer tasks, but the turn costs more and takes longer.
  • Altar can see your whole project, not just the comp you have open. Ask what comps are in the project, where a precomp lives in your folders, or - the useful one - what else uses this. Before it changes a precomp that five other comps share, it can now tell you those five comps by name instead of guessing or asking you. It reads footage only when you ask about footage, so a project full of image sequences doesn't crowd out the answer. Looking never opens or changes anything: your viewer, your playhead and your undo history are exactly where you left them.
  • Ask where a layer actually is. Altar can now tell you a layer's real position in 3D space and where it lands on screen, at any moment in time, with everything its parents and the camera are doing to it already accounted for. It works the answer out from After Effects itself, so it matches what you see in the viewer. Ask for one layer or a whole comp, and it tells you about the camera in effect at that moment too.
  • Altar can now put a layer exactly where you point. Ask for something on a specific spot on screen - a pin on a city, a label on a shoulder, a badge stuck to a globe - and Altar works out the 3D position that actually lands there, under your real camera, even when it is off to one side and rotated. It handles the fiddly part too: if the layer is parented to a null, you get the number that belongs in the child's Position, not a world position that would land somewhere else. It tells you how close it got, in pixels, rather than asking you to take its word for it, and if you point somewhere off the edge of a sphere it says so instead of quietly sticking the layer on the rim. It only hands back the numbers - it never moves anything on its own.
  • Altar can look at any comp, without dragging you into it. Ask about the precomp on layer 4 and it just reads it - your viewer, your open comp and your playhead stay exactly where you left them. It can follow a precomp layer straight into the comp it points at, so you no longer have to double-click in first and re-ask.
  • It can't quietly change the wrong comp any more. Altar always writes to the comp you have open. If it worked something out in one comp and you moved to another, the change now stops and says so instead of landing somewhere you weren't looking - even when both comps have a layer with the same name in the same place, which used to sail straight through. When it does need to work in another comp, it brings that comp forward first, so you can see it happen.
  • Move a launched widget out of the way. A widget you open from its launcher button now has a title bar showing its name: drag it by that name to slide the widget anywhere on the canvas, so it never has to sit on top of the thing you're working with. It stays where you put it the next time you open it, and it can't be dragged off the edge of the panel.
  • Groups fold away, and say what's inside. Click anywhere on a group's header - the icon, the name, the empty space - to fold it up, and click again to open it. A folded group shows how many Blocks it's holding, so you can leave the ones you're not using rolled up without losing track, and its title bar grows to fill the row so a stack of folded groups stays readable. Every group now wears an icon too: the built-in ones ship with their own, and you can change any of them (or pick letters, or upload your own SVG) in Settings → the group → Appearance.
  • Send feedback without leaving After Effects. Found a bug or thought of something Altar should do? Send it straight from the panel - right-click the Forge canvas, or use the new button in the Chat and Vault sidebars, or Settings → General. Attach a screenshot or two, and expand Diagnostics if you want to see exactly what gets sent along with it (recent logs are included by default, and API keys are stripped out; in Chat you can also choose to include the conversation, which stays off unless you tick it). No internet? It saves your report and sends it the next time Altar starts. We read every one, and may reply to your account email.
  • Buttons can live anywhere on the canvas. A one-click Block no longer has to sit inside a group. Right-click the Forge canvas, pick anything from the whole catalog, and it lands where you asked - the Add list now shows every Block, sorted under its category, with your off-canvas groups on top. Want it in a group instead? Press → on the row (or click its chevron) and pick one, without leaving the list. Groups are still there for organising - they're just no longer compulsory.
  • Buttons resize, and wide ones show their name. Drag a Button wider or taller like any other Block. Make it wider than it is tall and its name appears beside the icon, so a long one like "Camera Rig" is readable - turn the name back off in Settings if you'd rather keep the icon alone. Blocks that are genuinely fixed-size now say so properly and stop resizing.
  • Drag Blocks in and out of groups. Pick up any Block and drop it into a group, out onto the canvas, or straight from one group to another - the group you're over lights up as you drag, and the Block lands wherever you let go. Drag past a group on the way and nothing happens; only the release counts. Pull one out of a group and it settles just underneath that group, not miles down at the bottom of your layout. Moving a Block between groups used to mean removing it and adding it again.
  • One way to place any Block. Settings shows the same control for every Block: put it on the canvas, or pick a group to drop it into. Newly created Buttons land on the canvas instead of being filed into a My Buttons group nobody asked for. Existing My Buttons groups are left as they are.
  • One consistent Vault card. Every asset now looks and behaves the same, whether it comes from the ready-made catalog, your Local Library, or a team. A card shows just its title and preview until you hover it (revealing the file type and a favourite heart) or click it (which highlights the card and brings up Import plus a small actions menu). Favouriting works everywhere now, and the Favourites tab gathers hearted items from your libraries too, not only the catalog.
  • A tidier Vault Library, and teams where they belong. The Library header is one line again: pick which libraries you're browsing from a single dropdown next to the title, and new teams arrive already ticked. Joining a team with an invite code and choosing your Local Library folder moved into Settings → Teams and Settings → Vault, so they're reachable from every panel instead of only the Vault. Settings → Teams also shows how much of each team's storage is in use.
  • Six new Forge groups for motion-design essentials. Guides, View, Expressions, Shapes, Text, and Animation add 54 one-click tools for guide layouts, viewer controls, expression management, shape-layer chores, text rigs, and reusable motion rigs. Their controls stay on the layer where they belong, modifier actions are shown on the tiles, and every group arrives on existing layouts.
  • Smoother scrolling around a big layout. The Forge canvas now scrolls both directions at once, so a diagonal trackpad swipe moves diagonally instead of snapping to one axis - handy once your layout grows wider and taller than the panel.
  • Six more easing curves. Fast/Sluggish, Slow/Gentle, Slow/Steady, Sluggish/Fast, Standard Ease Out, and Steady/Ease Out join the existing Easing picker. The full easing library is intentionally covered by this preset-and-direction matrix instead of becoming 28 near-duplicate buttons.
  • Jump straight to your files. A new Project group of one-click tools: open the After Effects Scripts folder, reveal your project folder in Finder or Explorer, and highlight the current comp or your selected layers' sources in the Project panel - one click each, no digging.
  • Reads are lean by default. Asking Altar what's in your comp or selection now returns the essentials - each layer's name, type, source, text and markers - without the heavy per-property tree (transforms, effects, masks, keyframes). Big selections that used to overflow now answer in one call; the assistant pulls the full detail only for the layers it actually needs to inspect. Proven in real After Effects: a 26-layer selection reads clean under the limit, and asking for the full detail still returns every transform, effect and keyframe unchanged - nothing went missing.
  • Add a widget, its pop-out button, or both. Each widget's settings page now has an "On your layout" control with a Widget pill and a Launcher pill - tap either to add or remove that form on your layout, independently. So you can keep the full widget, swap it for the compact launcher button, or have both at once.
  • Groups show up when you add to your layout. Right-click the Forge canvas and the search now lists your groups alongside widgets - any group you've taken off the layout can be put straight back, and groups sit at the top so they're easy to spot. Every result also carries the same little type pill you see in tooltips and Settings, so a pop-out trigger reads Widget launcher instead of the old "overlay".
  • Close on action. Widgets have a new Close on action setting: turn it on and the pop-out dismisses itself the moment the widget does its thing (apply a preset, run the tool), so you don't have to click away. Off by default; reading the current state never closes it.
  • Every widget can open as a pop-out. Any widget on your layout can now be dropped in as a compact launcher button (a small orange corner marks it) - a single cell that opens the full widget in a panel right next to the button instead of the middle of the screen, so there's less mouse travel. It's the exact same widget, and anything you typed but haven't applied yet stays put if you close and reopen it. Click outside or press Esc to dismiss.
  • Build your own buttons. The Settings list that used to be called Scripts is now Buttons, split into Altar's built-ins and the ones you make. The + next to Buttons opens a new New button flow: pick what the button does - run a script, apply an expression, run a menu command, add an effect or preset, or open another extension - then fill in the details. Script and expression buttons land straight in your library; the rest drop into a group of your choice. Each button shows a small icon for what it does, and the list is sorted alphabetically so it's easy to scan.
  • A friendlier New Script dialog. It now leads with the file so the flow reads top to bottom: pick your .jsx, and the name fills in from the file automatically (you can still change it). Long file paths show their end - the filename you actually care about - instead of trailing off.
  • Show or hide every widget name at once. Settings → Appearance has a new Widget Names control with Show all and Hide all buttons, so you can label every widget on your layout - or clear them all - in one click instead of toggling each one.
  • Custom icons for the Selection tools. The Selection group now uses its own After Effects-tuned glyphs instead of generic stand-ins, so each tool reads at a glance and no two share the same picture.
  • Launcher buttons resize too, and can open bigger than they sit. A widget's pop-out launcher was the last thing on the canvas stuck at one square. Now you can drag it wider or taller like any other Block, and widening it past square shows the widget's name beside the icon. Widgets can also declare a roomier size for the pop-out itself, so one can sit compact on your layout and still open at a comfortable size when you click it.

Changed

  • Forge starts on a real layout, not a pile of everything. A new install used to open with every built-in Block dropped on the canvas in one long column, which you then had to spend your first half hour deleting. Forge now opens on a designed default: the widgets you actually reach for sitting where they belong, their names on so you can tell them apart, their pop-out buttons grouped in a row, and all twelve one-click groups collapsed down the right-hand side, ready to open when you want them. Everything else is still one click away from the + picker. Your own layout is untouched - this is what a fresh install sees, and what Reset layout now restores to.

Fixed

  • Chat can see a broken expression instead of no expression at all. When After Effects hits an error in an expression it switches that expression off - which is exactly how a renamed layer quietly breaks a rig across a whole project. Altar used to read a switched-off expression as though the property never had one, so Chat would tell you the comp looked healthy. Now a full read reports the expression, the fact that it is switched off, and the error After Effects gave, and flags every broken one at the top of the read. Ask Chat "is anything broken in here?" and it can actually answer.
  • Blocks are back at the size they were designed for. Anchor + Align was stuck at a cramped 2×2 and refused to grow; it now opens at its full 3×3 and you can drag it to any size you like, right up to 8×8. Seven other Blocks - Shift Keys, Random Select, Select Nth, Select Odd/Even, Select Matching Property, Key Selector and Rename Layers - were quietly rendering a row or a column short, and are back at their proper footprint. The first time you open Forge after updating, those Blocks nudge themselves back to size, so a neighbour or two may shift down a little. That's a one-time move.
  • Hover hints get out of the way of a launched widget. Opening a widget from its launcher button could leave the hint card you were hovering stranded on top of the widget. Hints now close the moment a widget opens, and stay out of the way until you close it - the widget's own info eye and button tips keep working as normal.
  • Placeholder text no longer looks like something you typed. The grey hint inside text boxes was rendering at full strength, so an empty field read as though it already had content in it. It now sits at half opacity everywhere in the panel.
  • Signing in now covers Chat and Vault, not just Forge. Altar has always been meant to ask you to sign in once and unlock every panel, but Chat and Vault were skipping the check. They now show the same sign-in screen the Forge does. Settings deliberately stays open, since that's where you sign in.
  • Widget graphics no longer squish when you show their name. Toggling a widget's name used to squash graphic widgets like Anchor + Align vertically. Now the graphic keeps its proportions and simply resizes to sit neatly under the name.
  • No more "just updated" pop-up for a version with no release notes. The confirmation only appears once an update has actual What's New to show you, so it never sends you to an empty page.
  • Batch Color Replacer's colour picker now has a way to close it. The Find and Replace colour pickers gained Reset and Done buttons, matching the Settings colour field - Done dismisses the picker and Reset restores the default colour.

0.2.0 - 2026-07-08

Added

  • Forge - a Layers group of one-click tools. A new built-in group for the fiddly layer chores: lock or unlock every layer (or just the shy ones, hiding them to match), parent your selection to the first layer you picked, to the layer above (hold Ctrl for the one below), or in a chain in selection order, and colour-code layer labels - by type, by stacking order (hold Shift), or by parenting so each rig reads as one family (hold Ctrl).
  • Forge - a Keyframes group of one-click tools. A new built-in group that moves and reshapes keys without losing their eases: align selected keys to the earliest or latest, move them to the playhead or a layer's in/out point, snap them to whole frames, reverse them in time, clone them (straight or time-mirrored), flatten motion-path overshoot, separate Position into X/Y/Z, add a slider-driven secondary value, and copy or paste key values between properties.
  • Forge - a Composition group of one-click tools. A new built-in group that fits a comp to its content: Auto Trim hugs the duration and work area to the timing of your layers (hold Ctrl to trim to just the selected ones), Auto Crop shrinks the canvas to the visible artwork while everything stays exactly where it sits, and Crop Precomp pre-composes your selection and crops that new comp in one move.
  • Forge - eight composition batch widgets. The parametric half of the Composition group, each with its own controls: Auto Crop+ (padding + per-edge + ignore filters), Batch Rename Comps (search/replace, prefix/suffix, or sequence), Batch Scale Comp (by percent or exact size), Batch Color Replacer (find/replace a colour within a tolerance), Pre-Compose (attribute, duration, auto-crop and open options), Export Comps as Projects (to standalone .aep files), Batch Comp Settings (frame rate, resolution, duration and motion blur across many comps), and Batch Resize Canvas (resize the frame from a 9-point anchor).
  • What's new, right in the panel. Settings now has a What's New page that shows what each Altar update brought - no more bouncing out to the website. When a new version is downloaded and waiting, it previews what's inside so you know why it's worth the restart.
  • A real download page. motionaltar.com/download now hosts the installer for macOS and Windows with the current version and step-by-step install instructions - the "Download Altar" button on your welcome page finally goes somewhere.
  • A warmer welcome. The waitlist and invite emails are rewritten to sound like a person (because they are - reply to any of them and it reaches Hugo). If your invite is sitting unopened, you'll get a gentle reminder before it expires, and a hand if you've signed up but haven't installed Altar yet.
  • Vault - upload any file as an asset. Save a raw file straight into your library - video, image, vector (SVG), or 3D (GLB), not just packaged comps - from the same Save page. Every card shows a small badge with the file type at a glance.
  • Forge - Pre-render a heavy comp to a soloed layer. Freeze a slow comp or precomp to a rendered file dropped in as a soloed layer inside it, so nested renders and previews stop recomputing it. Pick the target with the new comp selector, choose the output template for each of its two presets (point one at your own ProRes 4444 template for small, transparent files), then toggle between the pre-render and the live layers anytime - no re-render. Only the comp's work area is rendered, and it lands exactly where it plays. When the render finishes, Altar jumps you back to the comp instead of leaving you on the render queue, and removing a pre-render clears its file from disk by default (a setting you can turn off).

Changed

  • Forge - the built-in groups now carry a colour. Each native group wears a subtle background tint keyed to the colour of its After Effects icon - Selection blue, Layers gold, Keyframes red, Easing purple, Composition royal blue - so they read apart at a glance. You can recolour or clear any of them in Settings; your own groups are untouched.
  • Forge - Groups now flow like text. A Group is a real container: its Blocks fill each row left to right and wrap to the next, so a Group that's five buttons wide shows five per row - resize the Group and everything re-wraps to fit, with no holes and no manual tidying. Drag a Block inside a Group to reorder it (custom free-form placement stays a layout-canvas thing), and widgets ride along at their own size, wrapping like big bricks. The Button list in a Group's settings is that same order, so reordering there rearranges the Group on the layout too.
  • Panel - a cleaner, higher-contrast look. Blocks now sit flush with the background as recessed wells, with their outline carrying the contrast instead of a lighter fill - so the panel reads calmer and your comps behind it show through. Hovering any button lights its icon and outline pure white (over a soft accent tint) instead of turning purple, and the accent purple itself is a lighter, more legible violet.
  • Vault - one Library, browse everything together. Your Local library and every team you're in now live on a single Library tab. Tick the ones you want and their assets show up together in one grid, each card tagged with where it came from - so you can search across all of them at once instead of hopping between separate pages.
  • Vault - a roomy Save page with a "Save to" picker. Saving moved out of the cramped pop-up onto its own page. Pick where it goes - your Local library or a team - right there on the page.
  • Forge - a full-screen, searchable comp picker. Choosing a target composition no longer squeezes into a tiny dropdown that cut off long names. Tap the picker and it opens full-screen with a search box - just start typing to fuzzy-find the comp you want, with every title readable at full width.
  • Website - the copy now says what Altar actually is. motionaltar.com leads with the point: an agent inside After Effects that reads your project before it suggests or builds anything. Battle-tested tools, hand-built assets, receipts on every step - and no more made-up stats.

Fixed

  • Forge - a solid layout the moment it opens. Starting Forge no longer occasionally scrambled your Groups - Blocks spilling past their edges - or left edit-mode dragging dead on the first try (a drag that stopped a pixel in, with no red guide). The panel now measures its own width correctly as it loads, so your layout is right the first time and drags start cleanly.
  • Forge - dragging works on a full canvas. On a busier layout - once you had a Group or enough Blocks to fill the panel - edit-mode dragging would snap back after a single unit, with no placement guide to aim at. Dragging now holds and shows a clear indicator wherever the block lands, no matter how tall the canvas has grown.

0.1.0 - 2026-06-28

The first Altar beta. Altar is the bridge between AI and After Effects: describe the move, and Altar builds the keyframes - you keep the taste. It lives in After Effects as three panels.

Added

  • Chat - talk to an AI assistant that can actually drive After Effects. Ask it to read your comp, build comps, add and arrange layers, tweak properties, and queue renders, all from plain language. Bring your own API key.
  • Forge - a canvas of building blocks you arrange to fit how you work. Drop in widgets and one-press buttons, group them, and tune each one in a live settings panel.
  • Vault - your personal library of looks. Save effects and setups once and grab them straight back into After Effects whenever you need them.
  • Automatic updates - Altar checks for new versions and updates itself. On macOS that happens quietly on the next restart; on Windows it runs a quick installer. You can always check manually from Settings → Updates.
  • Invite-code access - the beta opens with single-use invite codes redeemed inside the panel.

Notes

  • Altar is in closed beta. Things will move quickly, and your feedback shapes what ships next - send it from the in-panel feedback link or at motionaltar.com.