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Layerz Canvas/User Guide

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AI assistants (MCP)

Layerz Canvas can be driven by an AI assistant — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor or any client that speaks the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Describe what you want ("a 15-second launch teaser with our logo, three feature cards and confetti at the end") and the assistant builds it in your open document: real layers, groups and keyframes that you can keep editing by hand. You can also ask it to change what you made yourself ("make the title pop in letter by letter", "export this as MP4 and as HTML").

Turning it on

  1. Layerz Canvas ▸ Settings… ▸ MCP → switch on Run the MCP server. The status shows the address, http://127.0.0.1:4747/mcp.
  2. Pick your client under Connect a client and follow its three steps. The page shows the exact command or config for your port and token, with a Copy button:
    • Claude Code — run the claude mcp add … command once in Terminal, then start claude and ask, for example, "List the open Layerz Canvas documents."
    • Claude Desktop — paste the config into Claude's config file (Claude ▸ Settings ▸ Developer ▸ Edit Config) and reopen Claude. Needs Node.js (the bridge runs with npx).
    • Cursor — add the config to ~/.cursor/mcp.json and check that "layerz-canvas" is green in Cursor ▸ Settings ▸ MCP.
    • curl — for scripts: plain JSON-RPC over HTTP POST.
  3. Test Connection checks the whole path and reports how many tools are available.

Keep Layerz Canvas open while the assistant works. The server is off by default and starts again with the app when it's on.

What the assistant can do

Your assistant can list every tool for you (ask it "What can you do in Layerz Canvas?"); in short:

  • Read — open documents, artboards, layers and the current selection; look at the result as an image, or as a grid of moments to check motion.
  • Design — add and change shapes, text, frames and groups; draw with the pen (points and curves, or SVG path data); gradients; dashed and styled strokes; boolean operations; crop masks, mask layers and track mattes; trim paths; blend modes; effects (shadows, blur, glow, grain, colour); pixel art; embedded fonts; pictures, videos and sounds; the Layerz brand (mark, icon, wordmark, lockup) and device, Mac window and browser window frames.
  • Animate — keyframes in bulk (including gradient fills, dash offsets and trim; times counted from the timeline or from when the layer starts), moving a layer's whole animation in time, entrance and exit presets with a stagger, kinetic text, loops and wiggle, springs, counters, group timing, camera moves, motion paths that turn with the travel, scene transitions, path morphs, 2.5D rotation, beat markers, and the ready-made pieces (charts, code blocks, a virtual cursor, device frames, particles); it can also play, pause and seek the timeline in your window.
  • Import and export — Lottie and SVG in; PNG, JPEG, PDF, SVG, video, GIF, Lottie and HTML out (the same free / Pro rules as the app).
  • Undo — several changes in one request become one undo step.

Seeing what the AI does

  • While an assistant works, the window's toolbar shows a ✦ icon (purple while it edits). Click it to see which client is working.
  • Layers it adds or changes flash purple briefly on the canvas and in the layer list (turn this off with Highlight changes on the canvas).
  • When it adds or moves keyframes, the playhead jumps to that time (and the artboard it is working on becomes the active one), so the flash shows the pose being keyed rather than the document at 0 s. It never moves while you are playing, and it is off with the highlighting.
  • Every AI edit can be undone; the Edit menu names it Undo AI: ….

Privacy and safety

  • The server listens on 127.0.0.1 only — nothing outside your Mac can reach it — and refuses requests from web pages. Your documents go to the assistant only as you ask it to read them; what the assistant does with them is up to the assistant you use.
  • Set an Access token (Generate) if other people use this Mac; clients then have to send it. Port and token can be changed while the server is off.
  • The app is sandboxed. When the assistant names a file by path (a picture to add, a document to open, a place to export), Layerz Canvas can reach it only inside the export folder chosen in Settings ▸ Export; a relative path is also taken from there. Anywhere else, the assistant can send the file's contents or a URL instead.