Can we have headless script execution?

It would be great to be able to collect a project from the Commandline. It would be great to collect data from a project to a json file without having to pop open the UI for the app. It would be great to be able to swap media without having to save out and string parse an .aepx file.

How would one automate this?

aerender already works headlessly, but is not useful for anything other than rendering.

That’s my human request. I’ll attach my AI one here for the bots:

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  Summary

  After Effects lacks a documented, reliable command-line interface for headless script execution. This is a significant barrier to integrating After Effects into professional VFX pipelines, where every other
  major DCC application provides this capability as a first-class feature.

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  The Problem

  In a VFX production pipeline, artists work across multiple applications — Nuke, Maya, and Houdini — that are managed by pipeline tools responsible for:

  - Opening projects and collecting metadata (shot info, asset references, frame ranges)
  - Relinking or versioning media without human interaction
  - Validating projects before publish
  - Automating project creation from pipeline templates

  After Effects cannot participate in these workflows on equal footing. The only officially supported CLI tool, aerender, is limited strictly to rendering. There is no documented, supported mechanism to open a
   project headlessly and execute a script against it.

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  How Competing DCCs Handle This

  The Foundry Nuke
  Nuke provides a -t flag for headless terminal execution with full access to its Python API:
  nuke -t myscript.py
  A pipeline script can open a .nk project, read every node, relink footage, and save — all without launching the GUI. This is officially documented and widely used in production.

  Autodesk Maya
  Maya provides a dedicated headless executable:
  mayabatch -script myscript.py
  The full Python and MEL APIs are available in batch mode. Pipeline tools routinely use this to open scene files, query asset references, swap file paths, and publish — entirely without a display.

  SideFX Houdini
  Houdini provides hython, a standalone headless Python interpreter with the full hou module available:
  hython myscript.py
  Pipeline tools use hython to open .hip files, inspect node networks, update file references, and save — no GUI required.

  In each case, headless script execution is officially documented, stable, and a core part of how these tools integrate into production pipelines.

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  Requested Features

  1. Extend aerender to support running an arbitrary ExtendScript — aerender already runs headlessly and is deployed on render farms, making it the ideal candidate for this capability. Adding support for
  executing a user-provided script would allow pipeline tools to perform project introspection, media relinking, and other asset management tasks in the same headless, farm-friendly environment already used
  for rendering.

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  Impact

  Studios integrating After Effects into professional VFX pipelines are currently forced to either maintain fragile workarounds, limit AE's role in the pipeline, or exclude it entirely in favor of tools with
  proper automation support. Extending aerender with script execution would make After Effects a viable first-class citizen in production pipelines with minimal development investment, building on
  infrastructure that already exists.

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