The missing layer between Ableton Live® and your creative workflow. Real-time session intelligence, project lifecycle management, and deep audit tools — all in one native app.
A Remote Script inside Ableton Live® pushes track data, transport state, and arrangement structure to LIVEcompanion over a local socket in real time. No polling, no cloud, no accounts.
Genre, key, mood, release label, mastering engineer, tasks, notes, lyrics, checklist — stored locally in SQLite, indexed by project path. Survives restarts and re-opens.
From idea through sketch, development, arrangement, final mixing, to done — track your pipeline status, session time, and export history across all your projects.
The Dashboard gives you a live pulse on your creative output — weekly session time, active days, tasks completed, and projects touched. A GitHub-style heatmap shows your production consistency over a full year.
Create tasks directly or sync them from a MIDI track named "TASKS" in your set. Tasks with arrangement positions are grouped under your Ableton Live® marker sections, so the to-do list follows your song structure.
A live table of all tracks in your open set — type, status, instrument, effects, clip count. Expand any row for the full device chain, mix settings, and arrangement clips. Filter instantly by type or search by name.
A color-coded arrangement bar sits below the header, showing every marker section in your Live set — Intro, Drop, Break, Outro, and everything in between. Click any section to jump the playhead. Markers with tasks show dot indicators so you can spot unfinished work at a glance.
The redesigned Project view lets you manage every aspect of a release — from genre and key to label, distributor, catalog number, mastering engineer, and release date. Sub-tabs give you quick access to notes, lyrics, and session stats.
Keep freeform notes per project — mixing decisions, ideas, feedback. Write lyrics with [Section] markers for structured display and future teleprompter sync. The session log automatically captures every play, stop, and tempo change as a timeline.
See your total session time, playing vs. idle breakdown, and a daily hours chart showing your work pattern over time. Take snapshots of your session state and compare them later. Analyze .als files and diff versions side by side.
Built-in tools for producers running ClyphX Pro. Scan all X-Clips in your arrangement, audit duplicate identifiers, browse the full action reference, and build X-Clip strings visually without touching Ableton Live®.
See your entire session's signal flow at a glance. The Routing view maps out how tracks are connected — from source tracks through groups to the master bus. A dedicated Sends tab shows return channel routing in a fan layout.
Browse, filter, and manage all your Ableton Live® projects in one place. The Library sidebar lets you search, sort, and quick-filter by recent activity or ignored status — so you always find what you need.
The Transpose action lets you shift MIDI and audio clips across your whole session in one click. Select which tracks to include, choose semitones, and LIVEcompanion handles the rest — with automatic key detection so you always know where you're going.
Three essential calculators in one modal, auto-populated with your session BPM. Open it from the Actions widget on the Project Dashboard.
Name any MIDI clip with an = prefix and it becomes a shadow clip. All clips sharing the same group name stay in sync — edit one, and all copies update automatically within two seconds.
=kick or =kick:intro — only the part between = and : is used for matching, so each copy can have a distinct display nameLoad an HTML workflow file and start a session. LIVEcompanion reads the embedded phase metadata, highlights the active phase with a live countdown, and shows elapsed and remaining time in the status bar — so you can stay focused and move through your session with intention.
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A streaming chat drawer gives you direct access to an AI model with full context about your open project — tracks, tasks, tempo, markers, and project metadata. Use it to get mixing suggestions, summarize project state, or brainstorm ideas without leaving the app.
LIVEcompanion ships a bundled MCP server that exposes your Ableton Live® session to Claude Desktop. Once configured, Claude can read tracks, clips, markers, device parameters, and session state — no Python or developer tools required.
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.jsonLIVEcompanion puts a persistent icon in your macOS menu bar with live stats from your session. Close the window and it keeps running — click the icon or the dock to bring it back instantly. Configure everything in Settings → Menu Bar.
A setup wizard, guided tour, and project onboarding modal make sure you're ready to go — whether it's your first launch or your first time opening a new project in LIVEcompanion.
Switch any project to Liveset mode (via the Project Info tab) to unlock tools purpose-built for live performance preparation. The centerpiece is the Setlist view — a complete breakdown of your set's songs, scenes, follow actions, and timing.
Songs are delimited by scene names that start with *. Every * scene begins a new song; scenes between two * markers belong to the same song. Truly empty scenes (no name, no clips) end the current song.
Scene names carry encoded metadata that LIVEcompanion reads to calculate set timing, performance flow, and detect issues. The naming convention:
| Pattern | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| * NAME >N | Song start, next after N bars | * INTRO Zug >32 |
| >N Name | Next after N bars (prefix for non-starters) | >16 Chord Changes |
| >NJ:ID:LABEL | Jump after N bars (with stable ID) | >8J:S00:SISYINSICHT Outro |
| >N! | Stop after N bars | >16! Finale |
| <> | Loop / no follow action | <> Tropical Intro |
| ID:>N Name | Jump target (carries the ID) | S00:>16 Land |
| * ID:NAME >N | Song start that is a jump target | * I01:INTRO Zug >32 |
When a scene's follow action is set to Jump, LIVEcompanion assigns a stable 3-character code (like A03 or S00) to identify the jump target. This ID appears in two places:
J: marker, e.g. >8J:A03:TARGET_SONGA03:>16 Name or * A03:SONG >16IDs survive scene renames and handle duplicate scene names unambiguously. If two scenes are both called "Break", the ID tells LIVEcompanion which one is the actual jump target. When you resync from the .als file, IDs are preserved if the jump still exists, reassigned if the target changed, and removed if the jump was deleted.
The main setlist view shows every song as a collapsible row. Expanding a song reveals its individual scenes with:
>N marker in the scene nameEach song row shows its end-of-song flow: where playback goes after the last scene (next song, jump to a specific song, stop, or loop). Songs that are never reached by the follow action chain are marked as skipped (dimmed, struck-through).
A proportional timeline strip above the setlist shows only the reachable songs, color-coded and sized by duration. Hover for details; click to launch a song in Live. The total duration reflects the actual set (excluding skipped songs).
LIVEcompanion traces the performance flow from the first song: following Next actions, resolving Jump targets, and treating Loop/Stop as manual-advance (the performer triggers the next scene). Songs that are never reached by this chain are marked as skipped. If the flow creates a cycle (e.g. Song A → Song B → Song C → Song A), this is shown in the info panel as a flow loop.
Click Inspect File to read the saved .als file and compare its follow action data against the scene name markers. This is a one-time read, not a continuous poll — scene names from the Live API update every 10 seconds, but .als data only refreshes when you click the button.
After inspecting, the info panel shows additional detail for each scene's follow action (chance percentages, linked actions, loop iterations) and highlights mismatches between the name markers and the .als data.
The Sync Names tool in the info panel reads the .als file and proposes scene name updates to match the actual follow action state. It handles the full lifecycle:
>N from the follow action's beat countJ:ID:LABEL for jumps, ! for stops, <> for no-FA scenesID: prefixes on target scenesThe tool shows a preview of all proposed changes before applying. Always save your set under a new name first (File → Save As in Live) — the renames are applied directly via the Live API and cannot be undone.
The sync is idempotent: running it twice with no changes produces zero proposals.
The Wizard is a more aggressive tool that writes follow actions into the .als file itself (creating a new versioned copy). It finds the A/B Drums clip in each scene, measures the loop length, and sets a "Next" follow action with that bar count. Use it for initial setup; use Sync Names for ongoing maintenance.
While Live is playing, LIVEcompanion highlights the current scene in the setlist with an accent glow, and the timeline strip lights up the playing song's block. The containing song row auto-expands so you always see what's coming next without scrolling. Detection is consensus-based — it reads playing_slot_index across all tracks and only commits to a scene when ~80% agree, so a single off-grid clip can't fool it. ClyphX-only groups are skipped, and the polling rate stays low enough not to compete with audio.
Every task in a Liveset project can carry a scene anchor. The task quick-add captures the currently playing or selected scene with a stamp button, and the Tasks tab groups tasks by scene with the actual scene names from your setlist. A row of tasks for a scene gets highlighted while that scene is playing, so during rehearsal you can see exactly what still needs work as the set progresses. Tasks also get a one-click Launch button that fires that scene in Live — handy for jumping back to a problem spot mid-rehearsal.
Reordering scenes in Live remaps the task anchors automatically using the .als file's stable identifiers, so notes-to-self don't drift when you move songs around. Set terminators (scenes named END, STOP, or ---) end the reachability chain — tasks attached to scenes past a terminator are still kept, just not surfaced as part of the active set.
Live Mode is a one-toggle "I'm performing now" state. Flip it on from the header and the app reduces every poll: the session refresh slows to two minutes, watchdog timers back off, and the AI chat stops fetching context. Anything that could spike CPU or interrupt audio gets put to sleep. Flip it off after the show and everything resumes.
Live Mode also unlocks the compact overlay — a small always-on-top window meant to live in a corner of your performance screen. It carries five widgets, each independently togglable in Settings:
The overlay shares its setlist data with the main window, so opening it mid-set doesn't trigger a fresh fetch — it appears with the cache already warm. An arrangement strip window (separate from the overlay) shows the same color-coded section bar as the main app, sized for a small monitor or second display.
LIVEcompanion runs as a native macOS app alongside Ableton Live®, on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. No cloud, no accounts, no subscription. A built-in setup wizard walks you through everything on first launch.
Drag LIVEcompanion into Applications and double-click to launch. The app is signed and notarized by Apple — no Terminal commands needed. On first launch, the setup wizard guides you through Remote Script installation, folder configuration, and Ableton Live® connection.
In Ableton Live®: Preferences → Link, Tempo & MIDI → Control Surface → select LiveCompanion. The status bar in LIVEcompanion turns green when connected. The setup wizard monitors this automatically.
Save your project first (Cmd+S) in Ableton Live® so LIVEcompanion can identify it. All views populate with live data immediately. The arrangement overview bar shows your marker structure in real time. An optional guided tour highlights the key features.
LIVEcompanion is in active development. Here's a transparent list of known issues and their current status.
Task badge tooltips in the strip pop-out now open as a dedicated always-on-top Tauri window — they can never be clipped by the OS window boundary. Note: tooltip corners may appear as a solid rectangle rather than rounded if macOS private API transparency is not enabled.
The arrangement strip uses always_on_top + visible_on_all_workspaces, so it appears on every virtual desktop and doesn't show in Mission Control. Moving it between Spaces independently is not yet possible.
The Remote Script now declares a proper __version__ string. Settings correctly reports the installed version rather than a raw byte count.
On first launch the frontend may briefly show "Connecting…" while the backend sidecar starts up. Health checks retry every 10 seconds — it resolves automatically within a few seconds.
Notes, tasks, and checklist features are unavailable when the Live set hasn't been saved yet. Save the set to a named folder to unlock all features.