Prompts that work
What to put in a prompt, how the AI works on your animation, and how to steer it turn by turn.
The AI in EaseKit is a motion designer with a toolbox: it builds the animation, renders it, runs the quality check and fixes what it finds before it answers. Good prompts give it three things: what moves, where it lives and how it should feel. After the first version, short feedback works better than long rewrites.
A good first prompt
| Part | Example | Why it helps |
|---|---|---|
| What moves | “a toast slides in from the top, holds, and leaves the same way” | Defines the layers and the choreography |
| Where it lives | a button in an app, a screen transition, a 9:16 story, a product teaser | Sets the timing norms (see below) |
| The feel | calm, snappy, playful, premium; “like iOS”, “like Linear” | Picks curves, springs and distances |
| Constraints | duration, size, brand colors, “no bounce”, “loop seamlessly” | Stops the AI from guessing |
| Instead of | Try |
|---|---|
| “Animate a card” | “A pricing card rises in, the price counts up, the button pulses once. Calm, 1.2 s.” |
| “Make it better” | “The exit feels abrupt, and the title is too fast to read.” |
| “Add motion” | “Stagger the list rows by 60 ms, ease-out, from 12 px below.” |
| “Faster” | “Shorten every move by about 20 % but keep the hold at the end.” |
Contexts and their timing
EaseKit detects the context from your prompt. Set it yourself with the composer's Add → Context menu (Auto-detect is the default). The context decides the timing norms the AI and the quality check apply:
| Context | Single move | Stagger | Max spring bounce |
|---|---|---|---|
| UI micro-interaction | 100–300 ms | 30–80 ms | 0.3 |
| Screen transition | 200–500 ms | 30–80 ms | 0.3 |
| Product teaser | 300–1,200 ms | 60–180 ms | 0.5 |
| Social clip | 250–1,000 ms | 60–180 ms | 0.5 |
Text must stay still long enough to read: about 0.5 s plus 0.3 s per word.
Steer it turn by turn
- Send your first prompt and let the AI finish. The stage plays the new version.
- Play it at 1× and at 0.25×. Name the one thing that bothers you most.
- Send short feedback: “calmer”, “more punch on the heart”, “the ring should start later”.
- Read the change note under the answer (for example
@ring · start). Click it to dial how much of the change to keep. - Repeat. Each answer is a new version; nothing is lost.
- Reference exact layers with
@or press ⌘L with a selection. See Reference and lock layers. - Under the latest result, EaseKit suggests next steps read from the animation itself. They're one click.
- Send while the AI is still working and your message is queued (“Queued: …”). Click the arrow to move it back to the composer.
- Press ⌘. (Session → Stop Response) to stop a response.
- Hover a message to Copy, Edit or Regenerate. Right-click for Edit and Resend, Delete from Here or Open Animation.
How the AI works
EaseKit sends the AI a stable brief (its working method, motion principles, the animation format and an index of motion skills) and, with each message, your session style, session memory and the current animation with its open quality findings. The AI edits the stage with targeted tools (timing, curves, values, actions, camera, layers) instead of rewriting everything. See How the AI edits your animation.
Session memory
The AI can remember preferences for the session, such as “the brand never uses bounce”. Memory notes show in the Style tab under Session memory; right-click one → Forget to remove it.
Works with
Troubleshooting
| If this happens | Try this |
|---|---|
| The AI rebuilds everything when you wanted one change | Reference the layer with ⌘L and say what should stay: “only the button, keep everything else”. |
| It keeps adding bounce | Say “no bounce” once; the AI can keep it in session memory. Or set a style like Calm Interface. |
| Answers get cut off | Raise Max response length in Settings → Providers → Responses. |