// the find
juliangarnier/anime
JavaScript animation engine
Anime.js is a JavaScript animation library that handles CSS properties, SVG, DOM attributes, and JS objects through a unified API. V4 is a significant rewrite that ships as proper ES modules with TypeScript declarations, a built-in draggable system, scroll-linked animations, and a Three.js adapter. It targets frontend developers who want animation coordination without pulling in a full motion framework like GSAP.
The module architecture in V4 is genuinely well-structured — ESM, CJS, and IIFE builds coexist, and tree-shaking actually works because everything lives in discrete submodules. The stagger utility is one of the better implementations around: grid-aware, center-origin, range-based delay, and it composes cleanly with timelines. The Three.js adapter is a real differentiator — animating Object3D properties with the same API as DOM elements is useful and not something most animation libraries bother with. The additive animation support (compositing multiple animations on the same property without them fighting) solves a real problem that most libraries handle badly.
V4 breaks V3 in non-trivial ways and the migration guide is a wiki page, not something in the docs proper — you'll find this out mid-project. The dist/ directory is committed to the repo, which is a red flag for a library this mature; it creates noisy diffs and suggests the release process isn't fully automated. The sponsor slot images are all placeholders, which makes the README look abandoned even though the code isn't — bad first impression. Scroll-linked animation is new and the examples look good, but there's no built-in way to tie animations to scroll velocity or momentum, so anything physics-y requires manual wiring.