v1.8.6 — the demo release

The demo release. The README now opens with a two-minute video of a prompt becoming a finished arrangement playing in Live, so you can hear what this does before installing anything.

demo-video-README.mp4

Upgrade note: none. Re-vendor: not required — no handshake-fingerprint paths changed, so the Remote Script already in your Live User Library keeps working. Marketplace consumers get this through the ordinary plugin auto-update, with nothing to do in Ableton.

Added

• The demo video, playing inline in the README. Previously the only demo was an audio link you had to download to hear.
• Published GitHub Releases. The project had been tagging releases without publishing them, so there was nothing to land on. v1.8.5 was published retroactively and every release from here carries notes.

Changed

• The README says what the tool is, in the user's own terms — the opening, the worked-example intro and the bridge example rewritten by the project owner. The round-trip through Ableton is now stated up front, including that audio does not come back yet.
• The docs stopped defining things by what they are not. Around forty-five constructions across the README, VISION, FAQ, tour, CONTRIBUTING and SECURITY now state the capability, the mechanism or the fact outright. The honest limits are unchanged and still stated plainly — docs/known-issues.md, VISION's non-goals and SECURITY's scope list all read as before.

Fixed

• A stale claim in the demo-video design that listed work as outstanding when it had already shipped.
• A contributor-facing heading that undersold what CI actually checks.

Where it stands

Actively developed and honest about the edges. macOS is where it is developed day to day; the Windows paths are implemented and unit-tested with fewer real sessions behind them. Intro and Lite are untested. Sung vocals are on the list — today the synth sings, and the topline stays yours to write.

Requires Ableton Live 12, Claude Code, and uv. Max for Live (bundled with Suite, an add-on for Standard) enables the measured mix review; the authoring loop and the symbolic review run without it.

Full detail: CHANGELOG.md.

v1.8.5 — Initial public release

Composition and production for Ableton Live. Describe what you're after, hear it, argue with it — the song is code you can read, fork and rewrite.

What v1.8.5 is

Initial public release

• Purpose-built MCP bridge to Ableton Live with >100 actions
• Per-track and per-bus audio capture and analysis (requires Max4Live)
• Song-as-code model with git-based versioning
• Claude Code skills to assist with composition, arrangement, mixing, and production

Getting started

Requires Ableton Live 12 (macOS or Windows), Claude Code, and uv. Max for Live — bundled with Suite, a paid add-on for Standard — enables the measured mix review; the authoring loop and the symbolic review run without it.

/plugin marketplace add brookstalley/hallucinote
/plugin install hallucinote@hallucinote

Then /hallucinote:ableton-mcp-install with Live closed, assign Hallucinote to a Control Surface slot, and restart Claude Code. Full steps and troubleshooting are in the README.

Worth reading first

• The tour (docs/tour.md) — a song made start to finish across two sessions, with the transcript, the screenshots and the mix numbers. The song itself ships as source in examples/punk-fate/.
• Known issues (docs/known-issues.md) — every rough edge with its workaround.
• Security (SECURITY.md) — read the trust model before reporting. Building someone else's song runs their code, by design.

Where it stands

Actively developed and honest about the edges. macOS is where it is developed day to day; the Windows paths are implemented and unit-tested with fewer real sessions behind them. Intro and Lite are untested. Sung vocals are on the list — today the synth sings, and the topline stays yours to write.

Hallucinote is free and MIT-licensed. The Claude usage behind it bills to your plan, and a song is a long agentic session; /cost reports what a session used.