The Icon Vocabulary

Every icon in eXLib — rail, rows, tabs, Settings, Pseudo Effect Authoring, the Dependency Map, context menus, all of it — is drawn from a single shared registry. This page is that vocabulary, so a glyph you see anywhere in the panel can be looked up. Every glyph below is the actual file the panel draws.

One registry, one meaning

The law behind the registry is worth stating plainly, in the app's own words: one icon, one meaning, everywhere. A glyph never means two different things depending on where you see it — Apply is always the play glyph, Audition is always headphones, copy-to-clipboard is always the clipboard glyph, and Export is the same export glyph whether it's exporting a single item, a whole folder, or the whole library.

The registry is organized into five groups: 45 action glyphs, 12 surface identities, 5 status tones, 11 structural marks (disclosure carets, drag grips, and the like), and 15 owner-drawn glyphs outside the shared icon set.

The law also shows up in something you can check on any Library row: every row draws its actions in one fixed order, from the primary verb to the destructive one — Apply first, then Audition, then the open/edit verbs, then organizing verbs, and Delete, always last and the only red action. Both expressions and pseudo rigs share the same icons, sizes, and order, so a verb you learn on one row means the same thing on every row.

The action glyphs

Two ids may share a glyph when they are one meaning at two scopes — Edit and Rename are both "change this in place," Export is one verb at three scopes — which is why the same mark appears more than once below.

Glyph	Action	What it does
	Apply	Commits this expression onto the After Effects property you have selected.
	Evaluate	Runs this expression once and shows the value it returns, without writing it anywhere.
	Audition	Previews this expression on the selected property and puts back what was there when you stop.
	Open	Leaves this panel and opens the item in the surface that owns it.
	Open in the IDE	Loads this expression into the code editor as a tab you can edit.
	Edit	Opens the inline editor for this row’s name, description, tags and icon.
	Rename	Turns this row’s name into an editable field so you can type a new one.
	Move	Puts this item into a different folder.
	Move up a level	Lifts this folder out of its parent so it sits one level higher in the tree.
	Duplicate	Makes a second, independent copy of this saved item beside the original.
	Copy	Puts this text on the system clipboard so you can paste it elsewhere.
	Export	Writes this one saved item out to a file you choose.
	Export folder	Writes everything in this folder out to a file you choose.
	Export library	Writes the entire library out to a single .exlib archive you choose.
	Import	Reads saved items out of an .exlib archive and adds them to your library.
	Backups	Opens Backup & Restore — launch-rotation backups and manual .exlib archives.
	Pull	Pulls the selected After Effects property expression into the IDE editor.
	Apply	Applies the expression in the IDE editor to the selected After Effects property.
	Pull	Brings the current values out of After Effects and into the editor.
	Publish	Sends what is in the editor up into the library as a saved item.
	Save	Writes the current state to disk so it survives closing the panel.
	Delete	Removes this item permanently — it leaves the disk, not just the view.
	Clear	Empties this field back to nothing; the row it belongs to stays where it is.
	Erase	Removes this row’s value or wiring and leaves the row itself in place.
	Undo	Steps back one change, putting things as they were before it.
	Redo	Re-applies the change that Undo stepped back.
	Reset	Discards your override and restores the value this shipped with.
	New	Creates a new, empty item of whatever kind this list holds.
	New folder	Creates a new folder inside the one you are looking at.
	Add variable	Adds a new named variable to this expression’s variable list.
	Add control null	Stages a new AE null layer to host the controls this card creates — the layer itself is only made when you press Apply.
	Pin	Locks this property as the apply target so changing the selection cannot lose it.
	Unpin	Releases the pinned target so the panel follows the live selection again.
	Reveal	Selects this property in the After Effects timeline and scrolls it into view.
	Pick	Starts the pickwhip so you can point at the property you want to bind.
	Insert	Writes a reference to the chosen property into your code at the cursor.
	Detect	Scans the current code and offers the literal values it thinks should become variables.
	Refresh	Re-reads the source and redraws this list with whatever is there now.
	Search	Narrows this list to the rows matching what you type.
	Settings	Opens the Settings surface.
	Command palette	Opens the command palette for keyboard-driven access to every panel command.
	Find and replace	Opens find-and-replace over the expression source in the editor.
	Rebind	Captures the next key chord you press and assigns it to this command.
	Close	Closes this and does nothing else.
	Cancel	Stops what is in progress and leaves everything as it was.

Delete, Clear, and Erase are three different actions with three different scopes — one worth spelling out, since the distinction is easy to miss: Delete removes an entity you created; Clear and Erase both empty a value while the row itself survives, at two different scopes (a single field vs. a row's wiring). Which glyph a given button draws comes down to what its handler actually destroys, not what its label happens to say.

Surface identities and status tones

Surface identities are the glyphs that stand for a place in the app — the same glyph appears in the rail, a tab, a panel title, and a context-menu entry for that surface, so it always reads as the same destination.

Glyph	Surface	What it identifies
	Library	The Library surface — every saved expression, rig, folder and pack in one place.
	IDE	The code editor surface, where expressions are written and validated.
	Author	The Author surface — write a library expression together with its variables and save it.
	Variables	The Variables surface — the named values an expression exposes and binds.
	Controls	After Effects Effect Controls — the native controls an expression reads its values from.
	Rigs	Pseudo Effects — saved control rigs that install onto a layer as a native effect.
	Expressions	Saved expressions — the content kind, and the compact Library tab that lists them.
	Evaluator	The Evaluator surface — run an expression and inspect the value it returns.
	Dependency Map	The Dependency Map — what an expression reads from, and what reads from it.
	Comp Expressions	Every expression in the open composition, listed and reachable in one place.
	Composition	An After Effects composition — one of the timelines in the open project, with its own layers.
	MCP Bridge	The authenticated link between this panel and an external MCP client — pairing, peer identity, and what the agent is allowed to do.

Status tones are the family a row uses to say how it's doing:

Glyph	Tone	What it reports
	Ready	Everything this row needs is present — there is nothing to fix.
	Needs attention	This will still run, but something about it disagrees and is worth a look.
	At apply	This value is not known yet — it gets resolved at the moment you apply.
	Error	This is blocked and cannot proceed until the problem is fixed.
	Not established yet	Nothing has said what type this is yet — it gets inferred as the expression uses it, and that is normal.

Error deliberately shares its base shape with the other verdict tones — a circle with a different mark inside — rather than a separate silhouette like the bare warning triangle you'll see elsewhere in the panel as a non-blocking annotation. The two are easy to conflate but mean different things: the triangle flags something worth noticing, while the circle family reports a row's actual status. The question mark is the odd one out on purpose: it says there is no verdict yet, which is not a problem to fix.

Structural marks

Structural marks are chrome rather than verbs — they say which way something moves or where you can grab it, so the same caret legitimately expands a section on one row and moves an item down on another.

Glyph	Mark	What it means
	Expand	A collapsed section or tree node — pressing it reveals what is inside.
	Collapse	An expanded section or tree node — pressing it hides what is inside again.
	Move up	Moves this row one place earlier in its list.
	Move down	Moves this row one place later in its list.
	Collapse pane	Folds this split pane away toward its own edge.
	Collapse pane	Folds this stacked pane away toward the top edge.
	Library tree	Shows or hides the library folders/packs/tags pane.
	Drag	The handle you press and hold to drag this row somewhere else in the list.
	Drag	The handle you press and hold to drag a horizontally-arranged element.
	Resize	The corner you drag to make a floating panel larger or smaller.
	Working	This control’s operation is still running — the spinner replaces its glyph until it finishes.

Related

• The Library View
• Real-time Diagnostics
• Settings, Section by Section