Pull, Save & Hand-offs
Between the editor, After Effects, and the Library there are four round trips: Pull reads an expression out of AE, Save to Library either updates the item behind the active tab or captures a scratch tab as a draft, and the Library's two hand-off actions send an expression into the IDE or into the Author view. Each one is explicit about what it overwrites and what it leaves alone.
Pull
Pull on the toolbar reads the expression from whatever property is selected in After Effects into the editor.
Because that can destroy work in progress, it's gated: if the editor already holds different, non-empty content, an in-panel confirm — "Replace editor contents?" — stands between the click and the overwrite. Pulling into an empty editor, or pulling content identical to what's already there, doesn't prompt, since there's nothing to lose.
A toast reports the property name you pulled from. If the pulled expression is currently invalid, the toast carries AE's verbatim error along with it — a broken expression still pulls, and you're told it's broken rather than quietly receiving code that doesn't run.
Pull follows your live AE selection. Where an unpinned tab's Apply target is concerned this is the same rule, but pinning does not redirect Pull — a pin says where writes go, not where reads come from.
The Pull button is disabled, with an explaining tooltip, whenever nothing expression-capable is selected in AE.
Save to Library
Save to Library on the toolbar has two identity-safe outcomes:
- In a scratch tab, it captures the editor's contents plus staged variables and controls as a new Author draft. A toast reports how many tokens rode along, and the live tab is left intact.
- In an item-backed tab opened from the Library or Author, it updates that same Library expression. It never creates an accidental duplicate. A failed update leaves the tab's edit unsaved and reports the failure rather than falling back to a fork.
Open in IDE versus Edit in Author
A Library row offers two hand-offs. Both carry the row's raw authored source, with {{tokens}} intact, plus its saved token/control wiring; the difference is the workspace they open:
- Open in IDE opens an item-backed editor tab for full IDE work. Save from that tab updates the same Library item.
- Edit in Author opens the same item in the Author view, where its metadata, lifecycle, tokens, and controls are visible together.
Choose by workspace, not by source version: neither hand-off substitutes tokens on the way in.
Open in IDE lands in a new tab under the entry's own title and never overwrites another tab. At the 12-tab cap, eXLib refuses the hand-off and asks you to close a tab first. See Tabs & Hot Exit for the full tab behavior.
What each one leaves untouched
| Action | Reads from | Writes to | Leaves untouched |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pull | The selected AE property | The active editor tab (confirm-gated) | Your project — Pull never writes to AE |
| Save to Library | The active tab + its staged wiring | The attached Library item, or a new draft for a scratch tab | The open tab and every other item |
| Open in IDE | A Library entry (raw source + saved wiring) | A new item-backed editor tab | The Library item until you Save, and your other tabs |
| Edit in Author | A Library entry (template source) | The Author view | The Library entry until you save it |
None of these four touches a property in After Effects. Writing to your project is Apply's job alone, and Audition's only in the strict snapshot-and-restore sense.