Core concepts — the Bridge.
How Altar exposes After Effects as state and safely drives writes back into your comp.
The Bridge
The Bridge is the heart of Altar. It is the layer that turns a live After Effects composition into structured state — and turns intent back into real edits. Every Forge tool and every Chat move runs through it.
The Bridge does two things: it reads your comp into a snapshot, and it writes changes back through named operations.
Comp Snapshot
A Comp Snapshot is your composition described as data: layers in stacking order, their properties and keyframes, expressions kept verbatim, plus the comp’s frame rate and duration. Altar reads before it writes — nothing is invented.
Altar grounds every operation in what is actually on your timeline. The snapshot is what the AI reasons over, so a described move lands on the real property, not a hallucinated one.
Operations
A write is an Operation — a named, validated change the Bridge knows how to apply: set a property, add a keyframe, build a shape, queue a render. Operations come back with a receipt describing exactly what changed.
- Reads are free and safe to run any time
- Writes are explicit operations with receipts
- You keep composition and taste; Altar handles the mechanics
Where this leaves you
The Bridge is why Altar feels grounded rather than magical-for-its-own-sake. It always knows what comp it is looking at, and it always tells you what it did.