What is daw-mcp CLAUDE.md?

Project instructions for daw-mcp, an MCP server that lets Claude control the clip-launching view of Bitwig Studio and Ableton Live, which are digital audio workstations. It does not cover the timeline-based arrangement view.

Use it when building or changing the DAW server, its Bitwig and Ableton extensions, development setup, or workflows where AI creates clips and a person arranges them into songs.

It defines the supported music workflow and limits the project to addressable track-and-clip slots, avoiding unsupported timeline operations.

How ptaczek/daw-mcp configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to ptaczek/daw-mcp. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ptaczek/daw-mcp/main/CLAUDE.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ptaczek/daw-mcp

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

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Your own site

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Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

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Per session 3,688 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 3,688 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.03688	$0.03688
Opus 5.5	$0.01475	$0.01475
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00738	$0.00738
Haiku 4.5	$0.00369	$0.00369

Measured 2mo ago against content hash cf4ce5ac0cf1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

daw-mcp CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 396 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 396 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

DAW MCP Project

MCP server for controlling DAWs (Bitwig Studio, Ableton Live) from Claude.

Scope: Session View / Clip Launcher Only

This project intentionally targets only the clip launcher (Bitwig) / session view (Ableton) paradigm. Arrangement view is out of scope.

Rationale:

Clip launcher provides discrete, addressable units (track × slot) - ideal for AI-driven workflows
Arrangement view has continuous timeline addressing - fragile, less intuitive for AI
Bitwig's Control Surface API doesn't expose arrangement clips at all
Ableton's API has arrangement access, but asymmetric support across DAWs is undesirable
The user arranges clips into songs - that's human creative territory

Implications:

No arrangement clip creation, reading, or note manipulation
No Reaper support (Reaper lacks a clip launcher paradigm entirely)
MIDI/OSC alternatives were considered but rejected - not worth the complexity

Workflow: AI generates clips in launcher slots → User arranges them into songs on timeline.

Project Structure

bitwig-extension/ - Java extension for Bitwig Studio (TCP server on port 8181)
ableton-extension/ - Python MIDI Remote Script for Ableton Live (port 8182)
mcp-server/ - TypeScript MCP server that bridges Claude to DAW extensions

Building (Development)

# Bitwig extension
cd bitwig-extension && gradle build && gradle copyExtension

# MCP server
cd mcp-server && npm install && npm run build

Release Build

Creates a distributable ZIP with all components:

./scripts/release.sh 1.0.0

Output: release/daw-mcp-1.0.0.zip (~325KB)

Contents:

BitwigMCP.bwextension - Java extension (cross-platform, single file)
AbletonMCP/ - Python Remote Scripts (cross-platform)
mcp-server.js - Bundled MCP server (~215KB, requires Node.js)
config.example.json - Example configuration
README.md - Installation instructions

How it works:

Builds Bitwig extension via Gradle
Bundles MCP server with esbuild into single JS file
Copies Ableton Python scripts
Creates ZIP archive

Read the full file on GitHub · 396 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 396 lines · 3,688 tokens per session scan A cf4ce5ac0cf1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

daw-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository ptaczek/daw-mcp (24 stars, last pushed 10mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 3,688 tokens to every session, about $0.0148 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Building agents Creative and media ableton-live ai-music bitwig claude daw mcp

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daw-mcp: Instructions file for Claude Code