ableton-live

ableton-live (alias: loophole)

A thin developer-experience layer for the Loophole Bridge, the MCP server that controls Ableton Live 12 over the official Extensions SDK. This skill closes the loop between "the bridge is installed" and "the agent uses it well." It does three things and nothing more.

It never talks to Live directly. It does not embed tool logic, re-implement the bridge, or import any bridge or SDK code. The bridge is the only thing that touches the Live Object Model. Every Live operation in this skill is a call to one of the bridge's MCP tools.

What this skill does

1. /doctor runs five prerequisite checks (Live running, extension installed, Node version, bridge port reachable, token present) and prints a PASS or a specific FIX line for each, then one verdict. See doctor.md. It never auto-runs /setup.
2. /setup reads the port and bearer token from bridge.json, then emits one merge-safe MCP client block for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or Cursor. It never writes or replaces a config file. See setup.md.
3. Recipes are reusable snippets for common Live edits, each a named sequence of real bridge tool calls. See recipes/: humanize-midi, build-arrangement, batch-rename, chord-from-prompt.

How the pieces connect

flowchart LR
  U["User intent"] --> SK["ableton-live skill"]
  SK --> DOC["/doctor: 5 checks"]
  SK --> SET["/setup: emit merge-safe config block"]
  SK --> REC["recipes: tool sequences"]
  DOC -. "reads" .-> BJ["bridge.json"]
  SET -. "reads" .-> BJ
  REC --> BR["Loophole Bridge (MCP tools)"]
  BR --> LIVE["Ableton Live 12 Suite"]
  classDef accent fill:#E9A23B,stroke:#9A6A1A,color:#160F02,font-weight:bold;
  class BR accent

The skill reads bridge.json (for /doctor and /setup) and issues MCP tool calls (for recipes). It does not reach past the bridge.

The bridge tools the recipes use

The recipes reference only these registered MCP tools. No recipe invents a tool.

Tool	Read or write	What it does
live_get_song_overview	read	tempo, scale, grid, counts, and current opaque track references
live_find_track	read	resolve a track name or substring to current opaque track references
live_list_clips	read	list a track's session slots and clips with current opaque references
live_get_notes	read	read all MIDI notes from one clip
live_set_tempo	write	set the Set tempo in BPM
live_set_track_props	write	set a track's name, mute, solo, or arm in one serialized mutation
live_set_notes	write	replace all MIDI notes in one clip in one serialized mutation
live_create_track	write	create one empty MIDI or audio track
live_create_midi_clip	write	create an empty MIDI clip in a session clip slot
live_set_param	write	set one device parameter using its returned opaque session reference
live_insert_device	write	insert a built-in Live device on a track
live_render_track	write	render a track's pre-FX audio over a beat range to a WAV