I know it's partly my fault, but by 2024 I would have thought that AE would have an auto save feature running in the background from the second that a new project is created. If only for idiots like me who work on something for hours without creating that initial save, only for something to crash the project then realise that I never actually saved the project in the first place.
Davinci has this built in, no saving ever. All aplications that use Apples API for auto save has this.
I'm only getting older, and forgetting more things, so the chances of this happening more often is increasing!