effectcraft/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to EffectCraft

Thanks for helping. Please read AGENTS.md first: its rules on assets and clean-room work apply to everyone, people and AI agents alike, and they are not negotiable.

Setup

You need Rust 1.95 or newer.

cargo run -p effectcraft                 # the desktop app, with the demo project
cargo test --workspace
cargo xtask ci                           # what every commit must pass

Ground rules

• Clean room. Work from After Effects' public documentation and its observable behaviour only. Never use Adobe artwork, presets or code, and never copy GPL/LGPL/AGPL code.
• Every asset is attributed. Add a .attribution sidecar and an ATTRIBUTION.md row; cargo xtask assets checks it.
• Layering. Nothing below the interface layer depends on UI or OS crates; see docs/architecture.md.
• Everything is a command. New features are engine commands with an id, label, menu path, shortcut and parameters, so the UI, the CLI and the MCP server get them at once. Interactive widgets register an automation id.
• Tests with every change, and green cargo xtask ci before every commit. One task per commit.

How to add…

• An effect: add an EffectSpec in crates/effects (AE display name, category, parameters with AE's names, defaults and ranges) and its render function, with a determinism test and a behaviour test. If it reads the clock directly, add it to TIME_DEPENDENT.
• A command: register it with cmd! in crates/engine/src/commands/, place it in the menu tree in crates/engine/src/menus.rs, and test it including undo.
• A panel or dialog: crates/ui-egui/src/panels/; look at the result with the headless snapshot tool described in docs/testing.md.

Talk to us

Questions, ideas and bug reports are welcome on Discord and in GitHub issues.