effectcraft/docs/gaps.md

Where EffectCraft falls short

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Change: major (re-measured against After Effects 2026 26.5; ranked gap list with estimates; numbers reconciled with target-app-parity.md) · Target: Adobe After Effects 2026 (26.5.0.89)

An honest assessment of how far EffectCraft is from being a real replacement for After Effects, and the work that closes the gap. This document is meant for contributors and agents choosing what to work on. target-app-parity.md holds the numbers and how they were measured; the ROADMAP summarises both. Estimates marked "≈" are judgements from the evidence listed, not measurements. Hours are Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock hours, calibrated in target-app-parity.md. Update this file when the evidence changes.

Two different questions

Feature breadth ≈ 91% answers does each After Effects feature exist? Every one of After Effects' effects exists by name, along with the menus, panels, Classic and Advanced 3D, tracking, expressions, scripting and export. The self-graded 92-item checklist (appendix of target-app-parity.md) says ≈ 99%; measuring against After Effects 26.5 itself, rather than our catalogue, finds what that checklist never listed: the 26.2–26.5 features (Object Matte, Substance materials, ACES 2.0, Proportional Scrubbing, paste SVG/AI as shapes…), the 621 bundled animation presets, project and template formats, and hardware encoding.

Ready for real work ≈ 45% answers can someone who uses After Effects for a living do real work in EffectCraft? It is still estimated, not measured. Four things hold it back: projects we can't open (.aep), behaviour nobody has checked against After Effects (one live comparison so far: scalar ease, 168 samples), reliability outside macOS, and the third-party plug-ins and presets professional projects depend on. It sits higher than the 5 October estimate (30–50%) because 179 issues were closed with regression tests between 5 and 10 October.

By dimension

Dimension	%	Hours	Evidence
Breadth of features	≈ 91%	(below)	All 306 effects, the After Effects menus (587 entries) and panels, Classic and Advanced 3D, tracking, expressions, scripting, render queue. Missing: entries 7, 13, 14, 16 and 21 below
Behaves like After Effects	≈ 50%, mostly unmeasured	360–660 (features)	The first live G1 comparison checks eight scalar Rotation/ease cases (168 samples) against After Effects 26.3x87 via AEsync 2.0.4: all pass after fixing overlapping temporal influences, maximum error below 3e-11 degrees (fidelity/README.md). Nothing else is compared. An outside contributor found four bugs in features marked done within a day (PRs #6–#10); users have found well over a hundred more since, and 134 issues are open
Opening existing After Effects work	≈ 0%	80–160	.aep / .aepx / .mogrt / .ffx can't be read; After Effects plug-ins can't run. Expressions and the scripting object model are strong, so scripts and expressions carry over
UI/UX fidelity	≈ 65%	60–120	ui-parity.md
File formats	≈ 50%	130–230	file-format-parity.md
Hardware	≈ 40%	60–120	hardware-parity.md
Localization	≈ 12%	60–110 + review	localization-parity.md
Stability	≈ 45%	40–80	23 never-crash PRs landed on 4 October and the "Never crash" rules bind every crate, but crash reports are open (#580 Chromatic Aberrations pan/tilt, #591 Windows ARM64 device loss, #501 crash on startup, #426 timeline drag while playing, #341 quit on Intel Mac, #306 divider drag, #234 macOS 27 exit, #511 drag over import dialog), and no CI workflow runs cargo xtask ci on pull requests
Real-user experience	≈ 60%, uneven by platform	(in G2)	179 issues closed 5–10 October, nearly all with regression tests (log below); 134 open, many from Linux and Windows. Most checking still happens on macOS
Performance	unknown against After Effects, ≈ 35%	50–100	Internal numbers only (e.g. Advanced 3D 290 ms/frame at 1080p on the GPU on an M4 Pro). Users report stutter on cached frames (#595, #304), slow scrubbing (#329), late audio (#554). No 4K / hundreds-of-layers project tested
Media formats	≈ 75%	(in file formats)	H.264, ProRes, HEVC, AV1, VP9, image sequences and audio exist. The HEVC / AV1 encoders have no B-frames, multi-reference or SAO / CDEF, so files are larger than from mature encoders. Camera formats (BRAW, R3D, ProRes RAW, variable-frame-rate phone video) are unverified
AI-assisted tools	≈ 35%	40–80	Roto Brush 2.0 / 3.0 with MobileSAM (M13.35) scores IoU 0.989 on the base frame of our synthetic moving-disc test and ≥ 0.980 over 20 propagated frames (classic: 0.973). Face tracking with MediaPipe Face Landmarker (M13.36) matches Google's own pipeline to 0.85 px on a test portrait. Neither is compared with After Effects; Object Matte (26.2) is missing
Maturity	early	—	First commit 1 October 2026. ≈ 329,000 lines of almost entirely agent-written Rust, 2,704 tests, 313 GitHub issues. After Effects has around 30 years of edge cases behind it

Every known gap, ranked

Alpha blockers: none. Every core workflow passes the alpha gate; the entries below are what stands between alpha and beta (gap 1 decides beta). The rough edges the gate lists live in gaps 5, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 17.

Ranked by user impact × how many users hit it. Each entry: what's missing, evidence, impact, estimate, the workstream (G1–G9, below) and the parity doc it belongs to. Small single-issue bugs are grouped by area; the issue tracker has the rest.

#	Gap	Evidence	Impact	Estimate	Work · doc
1	.aep / .aepx projects can't be opened	No reader; candidate route py-aep (#248, MIT, external converter) awaits an owner decision on clean-room scope; #190	The biggest barrier to switching: existing work, templates and client projects stay in After Effects	80–160 h	G4 · file-format-parity.md
2	Fidelity unmeasured beyond scalar ease	fidelity/: 168 samples, one property type; compare_frames helper exists, no corpus	Every "done" feature may still differ; users find the differences	60–100 h harness + P0/P1 corpus; more per feature	G1 · target-app-parity.md
3	Open crash reports	#580, #591, #501, #426, #341, #306, #234, #511	A crash loses work; outranks features (AGENTS.md)	10–25 h	G3 · this file
4	No CI gate on pull requests	.github/workflows has release, packaging-lint, FreeBSD and Windows ARM64 jobs only; cargo xtask ci runs locally	Regressions reach main unseen; 49 community PRs landed in one batch (#598)	4–8 h	G3 · this file
5	Playback and scrubbing feel	#595 stutter on cached frames, #304, #329 slow scrubbing, #554 / #504 / #335 audio late or crackling, #586 puppet lag	Preview is where motion designers spend their day	25–50 h	G5 · hardware-parity.md
6	Linux and Windows interaction bugs	#491 multi-layer edits, #488 rename arrows, #493, #492, #467 shortcuts, #268 drag and drop, #320 workspaces not persisting, #302 docking, #613 Direct3D 12 compositor, #596 GPU not detected	Many reports come from Linux; some Windows GPUs fail to start the compositor	25–45 h	G2 · ui-parity.md
7	Animation presets: 8 against 621	After Effects ships 621 .ffx presets (Behaviors, Backgrounds, Shapes, Synthetics, Text, Transitions…); we ship 8 original text-animator presets and read only our .ecpreset	Presets are how many designers start; tutorials assume them	20–40 h (original presets; .ffx reading is out of clean-room scope)	G8 · effects-parity.md
8	Mask and shape bugs	#510, #513, #527 (first Intersect/Darken mask), #509 Roto Brush size, #303 Mesh Warp, #553 pen tools on motion paths	Masks are core compositing	10–20 h	G2 · target-app-parity.md
9	Effect behaviour bugs	#580, #526 Fractal reset, #514 Apply Color LUT, #463 Curl Noise, #369 Motion Tile output size, #473 Cryptomatte selection, #474 multi-layer EXR decoded twice, #534–#536 community fixes pending	Each one breaks a look someone built	10–20 h	G1/G2 · effects-parity.md
10	Colour pipeline differences	#494 32-bpc blend modes clamp and apply opacity differently; #495 no Working Gamma 2.4; #340 ProRes 4444 tagged bt709 but sRGB-encoded; ACES 2.0 / OCIO 2.5 configs (26.5) missing; #546 / #547 viewer colour	Wrong colour in delivery is a client-visible failure	15–30 h	G1 · file-format-parity.md
11	Text rendering and layout	#453 CJK text in comps, #316 paragraph alignment inverted, #483 squeezed at 4:3, #417 soft at Fit, #583 font search, #550 toolbar font options	Text is in almost every motion graphic	10–20 h	G2 · ui-parity.md
12	3D interaction and depth	No 3D transform gizmos (#392, #347); Z position (#489); camera aperture (#260); reflections (#261); bevel options (#315); 3D issue reopened (#307)	Advanced 3D is After Effects' growth area since 2023	20–35 h	G2 · ui-parity.md
13	3D model formats and materials	After Effects 26 imports FBX, USD/USDZ, STL besides glTF and OBJ (usd_plugins), and Substance 3D materials with mesh displacement (26.0–26.2); we read glTF and OBJ	Product shots and 3D scenes come as FBX/USDZ	25–45 h	— · file-format-parity.md
14	Object Matte (26.2, disk cache in 26.5)	Not present; MobileSAM is already in effectcraft-segment and could back it	The new one-click roto; Roto Brush covers part of it	15–30 h	G7 · target-app-parity.md
15	Hardware video decode and encode	No VideoToolbox, NVENC, Quick Sync or VA-API; #498 asks for it; FilmCraft has VideoToolbox / NVENC / VA-API paths to borrow	4K playback and export speed	25–45 h	G5/G6 · hardware-parity.md
16	Localization depth	Menus in 6 languages; panels in 4; effect names and ~1,650 effect parameter names untranslated; French, German, Korean, Italian, Russian (After Effects ships them) absent; #599 Hangul boxes on macOS	After Effects is used heavily in Japan, China, Korea, Brazil, Europe	60–110 h + native review	G9 · localization-parity.md
17	Media Browser lists files import refuses	media_browser.rs lists TGA, DPX, HDR, AVI, MXF; media::is_importable has none of them; #431 any image imports as a sequence; #324 MP3 goes silent	Confusing failures on common VFX formats (DPX, TGA)	15–30 h	G6 · file-format-parity.md
18	Relative paths and relinking	Projects store absolute footage paths; no relink when a project moves	Moving or sharing a project breaks it	6–12 h	G4 · file-format-parity.md
19	Plug-in ecosystem	No After Effects SDK hosting (#600, #327 OpenFX, #334, #376 plug-in manager); our WebAssembly API has no third-party plug-ins	Many pro projects depend on Trapcode, Element, Saber…	40–80 h for API growth; SDK hosting needs an owner decision	G8 · scripting-parity.md
20	Multi-monitor and video output	#486 multi-screen, floating panels on other screens, Mercury Transmit to video hardware (we have a second preview window only)	Two-screen setups are standard for professionals	10–20 h	G2 · hardware-parity.md
21	Small 26.x features	Proportional Scrubbing (26.2), copy frame to clipboard and paste SVG/AI as shapes (26.3), variable-font filter (26.3), percentage guides and effect colour labels (26.5), the rebuilt Effect Controls (26.5)	Users of the current version expect them	15–25 h	— · ui-parity.md
22	Encoder efficiency	HEVC / AV1 have no B-frames, multi-reference or SAO / CDEF; Opus no FEC / DTX; #372 uncompressed single-file output; #325 render over existing file	Larger files than After Effects + Media Encoder	20–40 h	G6 · file-format-parity.md
23	Essential Graphics interchange	Templates are .ectemplate, not .mogrt; #338 Scale exposes X and Y; #611 FilmCraft rejects exported .fcgt	Premiere editors can't use our templates	15–30 h	— · file-format-parity.md
24	Timeline depth requests	#601 expand precomps in place, #602 reorderable render stack, #604 guide-only effects, #355 bulk keyframes, #425 keyframe confusion, #428 more shortcuts	Power-user speed	15–30 h	G2 · ui-parity.md
25	Accessibility	AccessKit is enabled in eframe and tests read focus labels, but no screen-reader pass, keyboard navigation audit or contrast check	Excludes users; After Effects supports screen readers poorly too	15–30 h	G9 · ui-parity.md

Where we're going: workstreams in priority order

Each workstream lists what "done" means, so progress can be measured rather than self-graded.

G1. Measure fidelity against After Effects

The most important missing piece: it turns every other estimate here into a measurement.

• Build a corpus of original test projects (our own content, no Adobe assets), one or more per feature id in plan/aftereffects/feature-catalog.md: keyframe interpolation of every kind, blend modes, track mattes, each effect at default and at non-default settings, text animators, expressions, 3D, motion blur, time remapping.
• Drive After Effects through ExtendScript (see CLAUDE.md) to record property values at sampled times and render reference frames; render the same projects in EffectCraft headless.
• Compare values exactly and frames with a perceptual metric; publish a per-feature fidelity score and a fidelity column in target-app-parity.md.
• Clean room: After Effects output stays local in plan/aftereffects/ref/ (gitignored). Commit only our projects, the harness and the scores, never After Effects frames.
• Done when: every P0 and P1 feature has at least one corpus project, scores are reproducible from one command, and target-app-parity.md reports breadth and measured fidelity side by side.

G2. Real-user reliability on every platform

• Fix user issues as they come in, each with a regression test, and answer the reporter (#41–#47 and #63–#68 are handled, as are the Windows report that the font menus missed installed fonts and the reports of 6 October, #85, #88, #89, #93, #103, #106 and #117, and of 7 October, #198, #201, #203–#206, #208, #209 and #212, and of 8 October, #225, #226 and #229–#231; #227 is handled except multi-monitor support; Wayland file drops wait on winit).
• Run the headless snapshot and control-channel checks on Linux (X11 and Wayland) and Windows, not only macOS. Interactions that only fail with real input (docking drags, viewer pan, drag-and-drop import, inline rename) need scripted input tests.
• Regression evidence for #66: scripted pointer tests in ui_viewer and ui_text_edit, checked headlessly on Linux, cover viewer clicks, marquee selection and text picking when layers are hidden or excluded by solo. They also check hidden/locked solo layers and solo layers outside their active time range.
• Regression evidence for #67: scripted input tests in ui_project_delete, checked headlessly on Linux, cover Delete/Backspace on Project items, multiple selection and undo. They check that an unrelated Timeline layer stays, an empty Project selection does nothing, viewer focus still deletes layers, and typing or dialogs do not delete items.
• Regression evidence for #484: the shift_delete_* input tests in ui_project_delete, checked headlessly on Windows, press Shift+Delete both as a key and as the Cut event Windows sends for it. Items in use go without the prompt, with their layers, in one undo step, for single items, multiple selections and folder contents. Nothing happens with an empty selection, in other panels, while typing or with a dialog open, and the next Delete still asks.
• Regression evidence for the reports of 6 October, checked headlessly on Windows: real pointer drags in ui_drag_drop (Project items into the Timeline between layers and at a time, and onto the viewer; an effect onto a layer in the viewer: #85, #88, #89), ui_render_queue (a template chosen from a menu moved to fit the window, #117), angle_revolutions_scrub_and_take_typing (#93), audio_lock_and_shy_switches_keep_the_frames and preview_with_audio_shows_every_frame_and_sounds_once_cached (#103), and a_frame_whose_render_panics_is_released (#106).
• Follow-up angle-input regressions in ui_angles (#141), checked headlessly on Linux and Windows, verify that Escape cancels edits and non-finite entries leave the value and undo history unchanged in Effect Controls, Timeline and Properties. Valid entries still commit on Enter or click-away.
• Regression evidence for the reports of 7 October, checked headlessly on Linux: ui_viewer full_resolution_frames_wider_than_the_texture_limit_fit (#201), the desktop app's no_arguments_start_an_empty_project (#204) and device_limits_fit_the_adapter (#198), audio_spectrum_follows_time_through_the_layer_cache (#209), preview_with_audio_sounds_once_rendering_keeps_up (#208), ui_timeline_shapes (the Add menu and Change Renderer, #206; deselecting below the layers, Alt+Shift+P and the toolbar's stroke, #205; linked Mask Feather, #203), dragging_in_the_empty_area_box_selects_items and selecting_a_mask_selects_its_points (#203), and input_keys_ignore_later_effects (#212).
• Regression evidence for the reports of 8 October, checked headlessly on Windows: a_short_project_panel_draws (#231), viewer_press_prefers_a_selected_layer_under_the_pointer (#230), match_system_uses_the_system_language_where_there_is_a_catalog (#229) and apps/effectcraft-web/tests/page.mjs (#226, #225); the #225, #226 and #231 reproductions also pass in the dev web build in headless Chrome 154 (device pixel ratio 2, a rejected file read, GPUDevice.destroy()).
• Regression evidence for the Turbulent Displace, Wave Warp and Bulge pinning of #227: edge_pinning_displaces_all_of_a_centred_shape_layer (render) and edge_pinning_on_a_shape_layer (GPU against CPU).
• Regression evidence for the effect points of #227 (shape and text layers measure effect points from the top-left of their comp-sized bounds, so Twirl, Bulge, CC Lens, Ripple and Turbulent Displace's Offset default to the layer centre): default_effect_points_sit_at_the_centre_of_a_shape_layer and layer_parameters_see_a_whole_shape_layer (render), effect_points_on_a_shape_layer (GPU against CPU), and the schema 1 → 2 conversion in opening_a_schema_1_project_moves_shape_layer_effect_points_into_effect_space (engine) and effect_points_move_into_effect_space_unless_left_at_their_default / puppet_paint_liquify_and_roto_data_move_into_effect_space (effects); see architecture.md §3 for what the conversion keeps.
• Regression evidence for the interface items of #227, checked headlessly on Windows: spacebar_taps_preview_and_held_spacebar_pans_the_viewer and spacebar_drag_scrolls_the_time_graph (Spacebar previews on its release, held it is the Hand tool), right_click_in_effect_controls_shows_the_effect_menu, project_items_dropped_on_new_comp_make_a_composition and dragging_over_layer_switches_sets_them_all.
• Regression evidence for the shape layer items of #227, checked headlessly on Windows: shape_tools_draw_into_the_selected_shape_layer and ui_viewer shape_tool_draws_into_the_selected_shape_layer (a shape tool adds a group to the selected shape layer), shape_contents_copy_cut_and_paste_between_shape_layers and ctrl_c_and_ctrl_v_copy_a_shape_group_into_another_shape_layer (Copy, Cut and Paste of shape items), duplicate_with_shape_items_selected_duplicates_them_in_place and ctrl_d_duplicates_the_selected_shape_group_in_its_layer (Duplicate), and shape_tool_options_paint_new_shapes, masks_of_every_shape_tool_kind, tool_creates_mask_draws_a_mask_on_the_selected_shape_layer and fill_options_paint_the_next_shape (Tool Creates Shape / Mask, Fill and Stroke Options).
• Done when: no open bug blocks a basic workflow (import, arrange, animate, preview, render) on any of the three desktop platforms, and every bug users report gets triaged within a day.

Real-user report log (5–10 October)

Kept from the 5 October assessment's "Real-user experience" row, as evidence of what users hit and what was fixed:

Issues #41–#47 (all from the Linux AppImage 0.1.1, 5 October): panning the viewer snaps back, panels can't be resized or rearranged, drag-and-drop and double-click import don't work, layer rename gets stuck, the Layer Settings arrow does nothing, the Project panel clips, the Wayland window icon is generic. Issues #63–#68 (macOS, 5 October): scaling a layer by its handles goes wrong and can stick at 0, two 3D compasses, the viewer lags while a layer is dragged (a frame renders in 20 ms but showed after ≈ 100 ms, behind RAM preview prefetch), the Discord and other links do nothing, Delete doesn't delete in the Project panel, hidden layers can be selected in the viewer. All but the last two were fixed or confirmed fixed with a test on 5–6 October (those two have community PRs); file drops still can't work on Wayland (winit has no support). The panning, rename and arrow bugs had been fixed in v0.2.0 already; nobody had told the reporter. A Windows user (6 October, on Discord) found the font menus listed only the three bundled fonts: installed fonts were read only when a project asked for one, on every platform. Fixed with a regression test on 6 October; the menus now list every installed family and its own styles, and agents get text.fonts / list_fonts. Seven reports of 6 October (Linux .deb and Windows): Project items and files couldn't be dropped on the viewer (#85), nor effects on a layer there (#88); drops in the Timeline ignored where they landed (#89); an angle's revolutions couldn't be edited (#93); toggling Audio, Lock or Shy threw away the RAM preview and playback with audio skipped frames (#103); running out of video memory panicked every frame thread and left frames stuck (#106); choosing a Render Settings template in the Render Queue did nothing (#117: any popup menu moved up to fit the window closed on the press). All seven were fixed with regression tests on 7 October. Reports of 7 October (Linux, macOS, Windows): the app opened the demo project on every launch, so a new comp landed in it (#204); a comp wider than the GPU's texture limit (11000 × 2200) at Full resolution stopped the window drawing (#201); an Intel HD Graphics 5500 couldn't start the app (#198: most likely the window's device asked for limits that GPU doesn't have, and the failure was silent); Audio Spectrum / Waveform stood still in the viewer (#209) and preview sound waited for the whole work area to cache (#208); a layer couldn't be deselected from the time graph, a shape layer's Fill and Stroke showed only with a shape tool and a drawn shape had no stroke to change, Alt+Shift+P didn't reveal Position (#205); a mask selected in the Timeline wasn't selected in the viewer, Mask Feather had no link and took negative values, the Project panel had no selection box (#203); shape layers had no Add menu for Trim Paths and the other operations, and Classic 3D comps hid Geometry Options (#206); dragging Puppet pins re-rendered the layer under the Puppet at every move (#212). All were fixed with regression tests the same day (#219–#222); the #198 fix couldn't be checked on that GPU. Reports of 8 October (browser, Windows, macOS): an empty project at 1280 × 800 with device pixel ratio 2 crashed on its first frame, because the Project panel's scroll bar clamped its thumb to a track shorter than the thumb (#231, any short panel on every platform); Media Browser ▸ Add Files… dropped a file it couldn't read without a word (#226); after the page's WebGPU device was lost, the browser editor froze on its last frame while edits went on (#225); a press in the viewer always took the topmost layer, so a selected layer behind others couldn't be dragged (#230); the language didn't follow the system's (#229); and a list of missing After Effects behaviour (#227): drawing into, copying, pasting and duplicating shape contents, Tool Creates Shape / Mask and Fill / Stroke Options, Turbulent Displace, Wave Warp and Bulge pinning all but a shape layer's bottom-right quadrant, a Spacebar hold that previewed instead of being the Hand tool, the Effect menu in Effect Controls, dropping items on New Composition and dragging over layer switches. All were fixed with regression tests the same day (#235, #237–#241); multi-monitor support and the Project panel's empty-area menu (community PR #210) remain from #227, and effect points on shape and text layers still sit half a comp off. A list of tweaks from an Intel iMac (#290): the layer bar didn't show where extended footage runs past its source, and Enable Time Remapping then ended at the extended out point; footage items had no Interpret Footage in their menu and the work area bar no menu; Label menus named the labels without their colours; the arrow keys didn't nudge layers; a straight motion path had no Bezier handles; Delete on Time Remap deleted the layer; a mask being drawn with the Pen blacked out its layer until it was closed; a double-click on a mask point didn't select the whole mask. All were fixed with regression tests the same day; the rest of #290 had been fixed already (#221, #238, #255) or came with community PRs #210 (the Timeline's empty-area menu) and #213 (tool flyouts on a long press). A report of 9 October (#397): CC Particle World ignored the comp camera and looked flat. It now sees its particles through an active camera layer, as After Effects does, and through its own Extras ▸ Effect Camera (Distance, Rotation X / Y / Z, FOV, added) otherwise; the layer cache also missed camera and light moves for the effects that read them (Card Dance, Shatter, Card Wipe, Caustics). Fixed with regression tests the same day. Most checking happens on macOS. Localisation covers the menus in Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Ukrainian, and since 9 October the cataloged panels, dialogs and tooltips too (Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Ukrainian; the Japanese rows of the panel catalog are still open); no accessibility work

G3. Stability and a green main

• Keep cargo xtask ci green on the current stable toolchain. A toolchain release that breaks the gate is a P0.
• Fuzz the inputs we don't control: project files, imported media and documents, expressions, scripts, control-channel and MCP requests. Every crash found becomes a regression test (AGENTS.md "Never crash").
• Run the gate on every pull request in CI (gap 4): today no workflow runs the tests on PRs.
• Fix the open crash reports first (gap 3).
• Done when: the gate is green on stable, runs on every pull request, and the fuzzers run regularly without new crashes.

G4. Open After Effects projects

• .aep / .aepx import is the largest single barrier to switching. It needs an owner decision on clean-room scope (whether and how the format may be studied), like the open .prproj question in plan/STATUS.md.
• A candidate for that decision (#248): py-aep, an MIT licensed Python library that reads and writes .aep files, reported by a user as working well. It can't be linked into the pure-Rust app. It could run as an external converter (.aep to .ecproj, the way ffmpeg is used only from outside), or its format knowledge could be ported. The second means reading another implementation of the format, which AGENTS.md rules out unless the clean-room scope allows it.
• Also in this area: relative footage paths and relinking when a project moves (gap 18).
• Done when: the decision is recorded and, if approved, a corpus of real-world-shaped projects opens with its comps, layers, keyframes, effects and expressions intact.

G5. Performance at real-world scale

• Benchmark projects at 1080p and 4K with many layers, heavy effects, long footage and nested comps; record preview frame times, RAM preview fill and render times on reference machines.
• Compare with After Effects on the same machine where possible.
• Done when: benchmark numbers are tracked over time and regressions fail a check.

G6. Media depth

• Encoder efficiency: B-frames and multi-reference for HEVC / AV1, SAO / CDEF / restoration, Opus FEC / DTX.
• Verify decode of the camera and phone formats people actually bring, including variable frame rate; document what is not supported.

G7. Learned models for Roto Brush and face tracking

• Decided on 5 October 2026 for Roto Brush: licensed weights with pure-Rust inference, if the impact on the system is low, in a composable, swappable module. Done in M13.35: the effectcraft-segment crate (a MaskModel interface, a registry that only accepts open-source licences, MobileSAM under Apache-2.0), weights downloaded on demand and verified, Settings ▸ Roto Brush to choose. Next: measure it against After Effects (G1); faster encoders (GPU) for long shots.
• Face tracking: decided the same way on 5 October 2026, done in M13.36: MediaPipe Face Landmarker (Google, Apache-2.0: BlazeFace detector and the 478-point Face Mesh V2) on a pure-Rust TensorFlow Lite interpreter, behind a FaceModel interface in the same crate, a 3.8 MB optional download chosen in Settings ▸ Face Tracking. The classical fitter stays as the fallback. Next: measure both against After Effects (G1).

G8. Plug-in ecosystem

• After Effects SDK plug-ins cannot run in EffectCraft. Our own WebAssembly plug-in API exists (plugins.md). Grow it: documentation, examples, and original effects that cover what the most common third-party plug-ins are used for (particles, glows, 3D objects, sabers).
• Features that come from third parties in After Effects are extensions in EffectCraft too, built on the same extension points as After Effects: scripts, ScriptUI panels and effect plug-ins (plugins.md compares them). ScriptUI panels in the user's ScriptUI Panels folder are listed in the Window menu, dock like any panel and open again at the next launch. Missing: the Startup and Shutdown script folders, keyboard shortcuts for scripts, ExtendScript's #include / #target directives and .jsxbin.
• Done so far: ease presets (#254) cover what ease-curve plug-ins are used for: easing curves kept by name and applied to pairs of keyframes. Modelled on a third-party panel, they are not core: a ScriptUI panel bundled as an optional extension (extensions/scriptui-panels/Ease Presets.jsx, Window ▸ Ease Presets.jsx) on the public scripting API, which needed app.settings that last, per-key methods that keep the key selection, and eases reported as they play (plugins.md, target-app-parity.md).

G9. Reach

• Localisation of the interface (localization-parity.md): since 6–10 October the menus are translated into Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Ukrainian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, and the panel catalog covers the first four. Next: effect and parameter names, the remaining panel strings, French, German and Korean, and native-speaker review of all of them.
• Accessibility (keyboard navigation, screen readers, contrast), user documentation and tutorials.

For agents choosing work

1. Read plan/STATUS.md for owner blockers and running work, then this file.
2. Prefer G1–G3 over new features. A feature that exists but behaves differently from After Effects is not done.
3. When you fix a behaviour bug in a feature target-app-parity.md marks as done, add it to the evidence above, and update its row in the ranked list (remove it when the gap is closed). That is how this assessment stays honest.
4. Don't raise target-app-parity.md's numbers without evidence: a G1 score, a user-facing check on more than one platform, or both.

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-10	minor	Alpha gate checked: no alpha blockers
2026-10-10	major	Re-measured against After Effects 2026 26.5: two numbers (breadth ≈ 91%, ready ≈ 45%), dimension table with hours, a ranked list of 25 gaps with evidence, impact, estimate and parity doc; the real-user evidence moved into a report log under G2; links follow the rename of parity.md to target-app-parity.md
2026-10-08	minor	User issues of 6–8 October and their regression evidence
2026-10-05	major	First honest assessment: breadth ≈ 99% vs real use ≈ 30–50%; workstreams G1–G9