Installation

Ground Control is a panel inside After Effects plus a small program on your machine that your AI talks to. Five steps, once per machine.

Let your AI do it

Your AI can do the terminal steps for you and tell you when it needs a hand. Paste this into Claude Code or the ChatGPT desktop app:

Read https://docs.jakeinmotion.com/ground-control/getting-started/install-with-your-ai.md and follow the instructions for an AI in it.

See Install with your AI. Or follow the steps below yourself.

1. Install Node

Node runs Ground Control’s local pieces. Open a terminal and type node -v. If you see a version number starting with 18 or higher, skip to step 2.

Otherwise download the LTS version from nodejs.org and install it with the default options.

2. Install the panel

Download GroundControl-0.2.0.zip from your order: your Motion Lab order, or your Ground Control order if you redeemed it from the community. The receipt email from Lemon Squeezy has the link, or sign in at app.lemonsqueezy.com/my-orders.

Unzip it and install GroundControl-0.2.0.zxp with a ZXP installer. See Installing ZXP Extensions. An “unverified publisher” notice is expected.

3. Run setup

Open a terminal and run:

npx -y https://get.jakeinmotion.com/ground-control/ground-control-0.2.0.tgz setup

Setup installs Ground Control’s local pieces, connects it to Claude Code and the ChatGPT desktop app if it finds them, and prints what it did. It is safe to run again: it reports what changed instead of starting over.

4. Restart After Effects

Restart After Effects and open Window > Extensions > Ground Control.

5. Activate

Your license key is on the same order as the download. It looks like xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx.

In the panel, open the Menu at the bottom right, choose License, paste the key into License key and click Activate.

Your AI has Ground Control the next time you start a session.

Your key

• Two machines. One key activates two machines. To free one, open License on that machine and choose Deactivate this device.
• Offline use. The panel checks your license when it opens. If it cannot reach the internet, it carries on for a month before it asks again, and the License window shows how long is left.
• Not activated. The panel still opens and still reports whether After Effects is answering. It refuses commands from your AI and says why.

Updating

Download the new panel and the new setup command from the changelog, install the panel over the old one, and run setup again.

If the panel does not appear after installing, see Troubleshooting.