AI Assistant Full

Chat with MotionLab. Describe what you want — "pace to beats", "add impact shakes", "punch zooms on drops" — and the assistant turns the request into a sequence of panel actions you can review and apply.

Bring your own Claude Console key

The AI Assistant runs on Anthropic's Claude API. You'll need a free Claude Console account and an API key. You pay Anthropic directly for usage — MotionLab does not bill or proxy any AI traffic. A typical chat exchange costs a fraction of a cent.

Setup

Before your first chat, add your Anthropic API key to MotionLab.

Sign in at console.anthropic.com and create an API key (Settings → API Keys → Create Key). The key starts with sk-ant-.
Add a payment method to your Anthropic account and load credits — required for the key to make real calls.
Open the MotionLab panel and go to Settings → AI Assistant.
Paste your key into the Claude Console API Key field and click Save. The status flips to "Configured" when stored.

Open the assistant

Click the AI tab in the sidebar. The panel shows a chat region with a message stream, a row of quick-prompt buttons, and an input bar at the bottom labeled "Ask MotionLab to edit, pace, or style…"

Quick prompts

Four starter prompts cover the most common requests — click any to send it instantly:

Pace to beats — detects beats in the active audio and aligns cuts/keyframes to them.
Add impact shakes — proposes camera shakes on suggested impact frames.
Punch zooms on drops — adds scale-pump animations to detected hits.
Suggest a style — picks one of MotionLab's styling workflows that suits your timeline.

Custom prompts

Type anything in the input bar and hit Enter. The assistant is tuned to the panel's vocabulary — names of effects, transitions, shakes, curves — so requests like "add a quick fade-out at the end of the clip" or "give every cut a slight zoom shake" usually produce a clean plan.

Plan before apply

The assistant proposes actions as a checklist. You can tick/untick individual steps before applying — useful when it suggests more changes than you actually want, or when one step would override something you want to keep.

Start a new conversation

The New Chat button in the panel header clears the message history and starts a fresh thread. Useful when switching projects or shifting topics — the assistant uses the current chat as context, so a fresh thread avoids stale references.

What it can and can't do

Can: apply any effect the panel already supports — transitions, shakes, flashes, speed changes, curves, beat-driven edits.
Can: describe a plan before acting, so you don't get surprised by a wall of new keyframes.
Can't: reach outside MotionLab. It won't import footage, change your render queue, or modify project-level settings.
Can't: work without a comp open and a layer selected — most requests are layer-anchored.

Billing & usage

Every chat sent is metered by Anthropic against your Claude Console account. MotionLab never sees your key or your usage — the panel calls api.anthropic.com directly. Track spend, set per-key spend limits, and rotate keys from your Claude Console.

Privacy

Chat content goes directly from your machine to Anthropic — MotionLab does not proxy or log AI traffic. Your project data and timeline are handled per Anthropic's privacy policy. The API key is stored locally on your device in {USER_DATA}/MotionLab/settings.json and never leaves the machine except when used to authenticate requests to Anthropic.