Reference Library

Tools for searching and retrieving primitives, personalities, style packs, and reference breakdowns.

---

search_primitives

Search animation primitives across all sources (engine, research, animate.style, breakdown, compound). Filter by name, personality, category, or source. Returns matching primitives with ID, name, duration, personality affinity, source, and category.

Try asking your AI:

"Search for Entrances that work with the cinematic-dark personality"

"Find all primitives in the Attention Seekers category"

---

get_primitive

Get full details for a single animation primitive by ID. Returns catalog data (if engine primitive) plus CSS implementation from the registry. Use search_primitives first to find the ID.

Returns: Full CSS keyframes, recommended timing, easing curve, personality compatibility, source, and usage notes.

Try asking your AI:

"Show me the full CSS for the cd-focus-stagger primitive"

---

get_personality

Get the full personality definition including timing tiers, easing curves, characteristics, camera behavior rules (allowed movements, parallax, DOF, ambient motion), default primitives, and recommended primitives by category.

Returns: Timing tiers (fast/medium/slow/spring), easing curves, characteristics, camera behavior rules, default primitives, and recommended primitives by category.

Try asking your AI:

"What primitives and timing does the editorial personality use?"

---

list_personalities

List all available animation personalities with summary descriptions.

No parameters required.

Try asking your AI:

"What animation personalities are available?"

---

create_personality

Define a custom animation personality at runtime. Validates the definition, derives guardrail boundaries and shot-grammar restrictions from your characteristics and camera mode, fills timing and easing defaults, and registers the personality for use across the pipeline — scene planning, compile_motion, recommend_choreography, and validate_choreography.

Definition fields:

Field	Required	Description
name	Yes	Display name.
slug	Yes	Lowercase kebab-case identifier (e.g., corporate-calm). Must not collide with a built-in slug.
characteristics	No	contrast (high | medium | low), motion_intensity (dramatic | rapid | restrained | gentle), color_mode (dark | light), plus freeform entrance_style, transition_style, perspective, and signature_effect. Defaults: medium contrast, light, restrained.
camera_behavior	No	mode (full-3d | 2d-only | attention-direction | none; default none) plus optional allowed_movements, parallax, depth_of_field, ambient_motion, and shake. The mode fills sensible defaults for everything you omit.
duration_overrides	No	CSS time strings per timing tier (fast, medium, slow, feedback, structural, spatial, emphasis).
easing_overrides	No	CSS easing strings (enter, exit, smooth).
speed_hierarchy	No	Ordered timing tiers, e.g. ["fast", "medium", "slow"]. Include "spring" to allow spring physics under restrained/gentle motion.
ai_guidance	No	Guidance string surfaced to AI tools when this personality is selected.
inherits_choreography_from	No	Built-in slug whose recommend_choreography intent/primitive matrix this personality reuses. Must name a built-in; if omitted, the matrix is derived from camera mode.

You don't author guardrails directly — forbidden features, translate/scale limits, and shot-grammar restrictions (allowed shot sizes, angles, framings) are derived from the characteristics and camera mode. See Custom personalities for the derivation rules and choreography resolution.

Persistence: on the local stdio server, the definition is saved to catalog/custom-personalities/<slug>.json and rehydrated at startup, so the slug survives restarts. Persistence is best-effort — on a surface without writable storage the personality is registered for the current session only (the response says which happened). create_personality is not part of the hosted Tier-1 surface; it requires the local install.

Returns: Confirmation with the derived guardrails and shot-grammar restrictions, which built-in choreography matrix recommend_choreography will use (inherited or derived), persistence status, and the full personality JSON with defaults filled.

Try asking your AI:

"Create a custom personality called 'corporate-calm' with slower timing, no spring physics, and 2D-only camera"

"Create a 'keynote-glass' personality with a full-3d camera that inherits choreography from cinematic-dark"

---

get_style_pack

Retrieve a pre-configured style pack with bundled primitives and timing.

Returns: Bundled primitives with personality-aligned timing and easing for quick starts.

Try asking your AI:

"Get me the hero-entrance style pack"

---

get_reference_doc

Access animation principles, spring physics documentation, and other foundational reference material by name.

Try asking your AI:

"Show me the spring physics reference documentation"

---

search_breakdowns

Search animation reference breakdowns. Filter by personality, quality tier, type, or tag.

Returns: Matching breakdowns with metadata — slug, title, personality, quality tier, and tags.

Try asking your AI:

"Find exemplary breakdowns tagged with stagger"

---

get_breakdown

Retrieve a detailed breakdown analysis of a real-world cinematic sequence by slug.

Returns: Full markdown analysis including signature moments, timing map, and extracted primitives.

Try asking your AI:

"Show me the linear-homepage breakdown"