Get your session mixed, balanced, and organized in seconds.
Stop wasting time on tedious DAW setup—tell your AI assistant what you need and stay in your creative flow.
Why Agentic DAW • Quick Start • Showcase Use Cases • Agent Capabilities • Key Features • Developer Guide • License
You opened your DAW to create music—not to burn half your brain on shortcuts, modifier keys, and complex control interfaces. Let tools serve your creativity, not your memory.
Strata Studio is an agentic DAW that your AI agent can natively control so you can focus purely on making music. Instead of spending 30 minutes manually levelling tracks for streaming, removing background noise from recordings, or routing effect plugins across every track, just tell your AI agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Hermes, or Gemini) what you want in plain English. Your session gets prepped, balanced, and ready for production in seconds.
Traditional DAWs were built for a keyboard-and-mouse era where every single operation required manual labor. As sessions grow to 100+ tracks, your creative energy gets drained by repetitive mechanical tasks.
| Traditional DAW Workflow | Strata Studio Agentic Workflow |
|---|---|
| Hundreds of Clicks & Manual Edits: Manually selecting, gain-staging, color-coding, and routing 100 tracks one-by-one. | One Single Command: A single natural language prompt controls 100+ tracks deterministically in a split second. |
| The Shortcut Tax: Searching online for forgotten keyboard shortcuts and complex modifier keys. | Natural Language: Just tell your AI agent what you want in plain English. |
| Dumb Track Labels: DAWs treat track names as plain text strings, forcing you to manually group and bus them. | Semantic Intelligence: AI agents understand instrument context (GTR_L_57 → Guitar Bus) and group stems automatically. |
| Creative Interruption: Stopping your flow state to handle technical preferences, gain staging, and file prep. | Pure Creative Flow: The AI agent works in the background as your tireless studio assistant. |
No terminal commands or manual compilation required. Open your AI agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Hermes, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, and 50+ more) and tell it to handle the setup:
Clone the project repository to your local system:
git clone https://github.com/Goldwaterfung/Strata-Studio.git
cd Strata-StudioOr tell your AI agent:
Clone https://github.com/Goldwaterfung/Strata-Studio and set up the project for me
Tell your agent:
Build and package Strata Studio for me
(Your agent will automatically run ./scripts/install_dependencies.sh and ./scripts/build.sh release --package under the hood).
Tell your agent:
Install the daw-cli skill from https://github.com/Goldwaterfung/Strata-Studio
Option 2: Manual Skill Directory Setup
To manually install the skill into your preferred AI agent framework, copy or symlink the skills/daw-cli/ directory:
| Agent Framework | Local Workspace Skill Path | Global User Skill Path |
|---|---|---|
| Codex | .agents/skills/daw-cli |
~/.agents/skills/daw-cli |
| Claude Code / Co-Work | .claude/skills/daw-cli |
~/.claude/skills/daw-cli |
| Hermes | .hermes/skills/daw-cli |
~/.hermes/skills/daw-cli |
| Antigravity | .agents/skills/daw-cli |
~/.gemini/config/skills/daw-cli |
| Gemini CLI | .gemini/skills/daw-cli |
~/.gemini/skills/daw-cli |
| OpenCode | .opencode/skills/daw-cli |
~/.config/opencode/skills/daw-cli |
Once installed, your agent uses skills/daw-cli/SKILL.md as its operational manual.
Below are real-time demonstrations of daw-cli executing agentic workflows in Strata Studio.
Natural Language Prompt:
"Import all the audio files in/Volumes/AudioDrives/Stems/Song_Session_A/. Place all clips at the start of the timeline. Clean up all the dirty file extensions and underscores in the track names, and auto-color the tracks based on their instrument types so my session is clean and organized."
- Key Commands:
daw-cli track create,daw-cli clip add-audio,daw-cli track sanitize-names,daw-cli track auto-color
Natural Language Prompt:
"Set up a 124 BPM session with an 8-piece drum kit: Kick, Snare Top, Snare Bottom, Hi-Hat, Tom 1, Tom 2, and stereo Overheads. Color them automatically, set all faders to -6 dB for headroom, and pan the overheads 100% left and right."
- Key Commands:
daw-cli transport set-tempo,daw-cli track create-batch,daw-cli track auto-color,daw-cli track set-gain,daw-cli track set-pan
Natural Language Prompt:
"Inspect the stems in/Volumes/AudioDrives/Stems/Song_Session_A/stemsand my installed plugin library. Set up a professional Synth Rock mix for me. Import only the drum and guitar stems, instantiate Serum 2 for 'Sub Bass' and 'Synth Bass'. Construct a professional submix group setup."
- Key Commands:
daw-cli plugin scan,daw-cli plugin add,daw-cli route folder,daw-cli prep gain-stage
Here is what working in Strata Studio with an AI assistant looks like:
User ❯ Set tempo to 128 BPM, set up tracks for Kick, Snare, HH, and Tom, and balance their volume levels.
Agent ❯ [Strata Agentic Engine]
✓ Set session tempo to 128.0 BPM (4/4 time signature)
✓ Created 4 audio tracks: Kick, Snare, HH, Tom
✓ Balanced volume levels across tracks 1..4 to prevent clipping
Done. Ready for your arrangement pass.
User ❯ Add a FabFilter Pro-Q 3 equalizer to the Snare track and copy the chain to the Tom tracks.
Agent ❯ [Strata Agentic Engine]
✓ Scanned VST3/AU host plugins
✓ Inserted 'FabFilter Pro-Q 3' into slot 0 on Track 2 (Snare)
✓ Copied insert chain from Track 2 to Tracks 3..4
|
Automatically balance track levels so your song is clear, punchy, and ready for streaming—while stripping out background noise, room bleed, and dead silence from your recorded takes. |
Load your favorite plugins (FabFilter, Waves, iZotope, etc.) and apply your go-to vocal or drum mixing chains across multiple tracks with a single sentence. |
|
Build your track layout instantly, sequence beats and synth melodies, adjust volume/pan, and edit arrangement clips by talking naturally to your session assistant. |
Play back and record huge projects with dozens of tracks and heavy plugins with crystal-clear audio—no clicks, pops, or annoying lag. |
Instead of manually clicking through complex menus, searching for shortcuts, or tweaking individual knobs, you command your AI assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Hermes, Gemini, etc.) in plain English. Here is what your assistant can do in your session right now:
|
Ask your agent to balance track volumes, adjust panning, or auto-prep your multitracks so your mix stays clear, punchy, and headroom-ready without clipping. |
Tell your agent to scan installed VST3/AU effect plugins (FabFilter, iZotope, Waves), insert EQs or compressors, and copy mixing chains across multiple tracks instantly. |
|
Sequence drum patterns, create synth lead MIDI clips, transpose note pitch, arrange audio clips on the timeline, and slice takes using simple conversational prompts. |
Group tracks into folder submix buses, configure pre/post fader auxiliary sends, and set up dynamic sidechain compression triggers across plugin chains. |
|
Set session tempo (BPM), adjust time signatures, control playback transport (play, stop, seek playhead), and organize track colors and names on the fly. |
Detect Bark-scale frequency masking & collisions between tracks, detect narrow-Q resonances with musical pitch notes, compute Pearson phase correlation matrices, align multi-mic phase, and stream real-time LUFS and True-Peak telemetry. |
- Session State & Transport: Set project tempo, update time signatures, jump playhead position, play/pause/stop transport.
- Track Setup & Leveling: Add audio/instrument tracks, set track volume & pan, mute/solo tracks, run automatic gain staging.
- Plugin Management: Insert VST3/AU plugins, tweak normalized parameters, copy plugin chains from one track to another.
- Timeline & MIDI Editing: Place audio clips, set start offsets & durations, program MIDI notes, transpose melodies.
- Bus Submixing & Auxiliary FX Routing: Redirect track outputs to folder group buses, configure pre/post auxiliary FX sends, link plugin sidechain compression triggers.
- Non-Visual DSP Analysis & Audio Intelligence: Audit Bark-scale frequency masking, detect resonant peaks, evaluate multi-track phase correlation matrices & sample-accurate offsets, stream live LUFS/dBTP telemetry, inspect 7-band spectral energy, and audit stereo width & mono compatibility.
Strata Studio is an open-source, high-performance C++20 DAW engine built for AI-driven music production. AI agents control the DAW via the skills/daw-cli/SKILL.md skill definition.
Building & Compiling from Source
The project uses vcpkg in manifest mode to manage dependencies.
- CMake 3.20 or higher
- Git
- C++20 compatible compiler: Clang 12+, GCC 11+, or MSVC 2022+
Run the setup script to install dependencies and libraries (RtAudio, RtMidi, libsndfile, nlohmann_json, spdlog, Catch2):
./scripts/install_dependencies.sh-
Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/Goldwaterfung/Strata-Studio.git cd Strata-Studio -
Configure and build:
mkdir -p build/debug && cd build/debug cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../../ cmake --build . --parallel
-
Run application:
./bin/strata_studio
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
BUILD_TESTS |
OFF |
Build unit tests |
BUILD_PERFORMANCE_TESTS |
OFF |
Build performance benchmarks |
ENABLE_SIMD |
ON |
Enable SIMD optimizations (AVX2) |
USE_ASAN |
OFF |
Enable Address Sanitizer |
USE_TSAN |
OFF |
Enable Thread Sanitizer |
BUILD_PLUGINS |
ON |
Build plugin host support |
# Build & run unit tests
./scripts/build.sh debug --test
# Build release binary
./scripts/build.sh release
# Packaged release
./scripts/build.sh release --package- Session State & Transport (
status,transport) - Fully Implemented - Tracks & Gain-Staging (
track,prep) - Fully Implemented - VST3 / AU Plugin Host Management (
plugin) - Fully Implemented - Clips & Timeline Editing (
clip,midi) - Fully Implemented - Bus Submixing & Auxiliary FX Routing (
route) - Fully Implemented - Non-Visual DSP Analysis & Audio Intelligence (
analyze) - Fully Implemented - Stem Exports & Asynchronous Render Jobs (
export,job) - In Progress
Architecture inspired by:
Ardour (libardour) • Bitwig Studio • Reaper • JUCE Framework