v0.4.0

dawg now has a full sound engine with Strudel's synth, effect and sample parameters, Strudel sample packs, wavetables (including ones made from your own audio), Euclidean drum rows and a pattern library, Orchid-style chords, sound previews with A/B, and one consistent set of keys across every screen. Projects from 0.3.0 open and sound the same, and the dawg SDK is 1.13.0 (every step additive within v1).

Previewing changes

• Audition loop in the edit menu. Space loops the focused track (solo, or the whole mix with c), using its own notes over a region of at most four bars, or a short phrase by role when it has none (chord, riff, groove, or one held wavetable note).
• Staged edits with A/B. While the loop plays, menu changes are staged and heard within about 100 ms (only the changed track re-renders, off-thread). a flips between the committed and the staged sound, Enter keeps all staged changes as one revision and one undo step, Esc reverts. Changed rows show staged ← committed. Edits from another window are re-applied under the staged ones.
• The audition controller (src/tui/audition.ts) and the preview score builder (src/audio/preview.ts) are reusable by any screen; a preview renders byte-identical to the same bars of a full render.
• Hover to hear lists. With the loop on, moving through a list (wavetables, instruments, drum kits, patterns, choice lists in /menu, and the /kit and /pattern pickers) plays the highlighted item on the loop. Hovers replace each other, fast moves skip straight to the latest item, and a pack sound that needs fetching shows fetching… without blocking the cursor. Enter chooses, Esc leaves with nothing changed.
• The agent can hear before it commits. preview_sound renders a track, or candidate set_fx/set_synth/set_wavetable/… calls applied to a copy, over the audition loop's bars, and returns RMS/peak dBFS, spectral centroid, a description and a comparison with the current sound. It plays once in a quiet window; /try agent off keeps it silent.
• Audition visuals. The menu title shows a level meter with a clip mark while the loop plays, and the focused cutoff, envelope or wavetable position row draws a one-line sketch of its response.
• /try <sound command> hears a prompt command on the loop first: /try fx reverb mix 0.6, then a for A/B, Enter to keep (one undo step) or Esc to drop it.

Effects

• A full effects chain on every track, in a fixed order: filter → dj filter → auto filter → vowel → bitcrush → distortion → tremolo → compressor → pan → phaser → chorus → leslie → post gain → delay → reverb. Each effect turns on with a good default and has a few simple parameters, with the rest under advanced.
• Filter gains type lpf/hpf/bpf and a 12 dB, 24 dB or ladder slope. Auto filter sweeps the cutoff with a tempo-synced or free LFO (sine, triangle, square, saw, ramp, sample-and-hold) and can follow the input's envelope.
• Delay turns on as a dotted-eighth stereo ping-pong with gentle feedback and a high-cut on the repeats. Reverb adds decay time, damping and pre-delay.
• Distortion (ten curves, tone, mix, automatic gain compensation), compressor (threshold, ratio, knee, attack, release, make-up), chorus, tremolo, plus Strudel's dj filter, vowel, bitcrush/coarse, phaser, leslie and post gain.
• Parameter names follow Strudel's (lpq, delayfeedback, room, tremolodepth…), and every numeric parameter can be automated (automate distort-drive points 0:1 8:6).
• fx prompt command: fx delay mix 0.3, fx filter type hpf cutoff 300, fx chorus preset wide, fx tremolo off. The Effects menu lists the core effects first, with presets. The agent's new set_fx tool sets the same parameters.
• ZzFX sounds: instrument z_square (and z_sine, z_triangle, z_sawtooth, z_tan, z_noise) with Strudel's ZzFX controls as synth parameters: synth slide -4 pitchJump 300 pitchJumpTime 0.1 lfo 0.25 zcrush 0.3, plus zrand, curve, deltaSlide, zmod, zdelay, tremolo and the zap preset. Clean-room, deterministic. SDK 1.10.0 (additive).
• Orbits and sidechain ducking: fx orbit 2 puts a track on orbit 2; fx duck preset pump on a kick dips every track on that orbit at each hit and lets it swell back (Strudel's orbit, duckorbit, duckdepth, duckattack, duckonset). SDK 1.9.0 (additive).
• Convolution reverb (Strudel ir/iresponse): fx reverb ir hall (also room, plate, a pack sound or a project WAV), with FFT convolution; fx ir off returns to the algorithmic tail. SDK 1.12.0 (additive).
• Shared orbit buses: fx orbit shared on sends a track to one delay and one reverb shared by its orbit, as Strudel orbits do.
• Raw ZzFX arrays: synth zzfx ,,129,.01,,.15,2, SDK zzfx([...]) and set_synth { zzfx } map ZzFX's positional array to the named controls.
• Strudel sample controls on sampler voices: loopBegin/loopEnd, clip (legato), fit, unit "c"/"s", loopAt, accelerate and squiz, beside begin/end/speed/loop/cut. /sample set brk fit on clip 1, the per-voice menu and the agent's set_sample tool edit them. SDK 1.13.0 (additive).
• Older projects and sessions load and sound exactly as before. The dawg SDK is 1.5.0 (additive).

Synth

• A full synth voice with Strudel's parameters. synth on a track takes Strudel's names and aliases: sine, sawtooth, square, triangle, supersaw, pulse, additive user and white/pink/brown/crackle noise; noise/density; unison/detune/spread; pulse width with pwrate/pwsweep; eight FM operators (fm, fmh, an ADSR, fmenv, fmwave); ADSR; a pitch envelope (penv…); vibrato; and low-, high- and band-pass filters with envelopes and ftype.
• Presets: pad, lead, pluck, bass, sub, acid, keys, bell, organ, strings, brass, wind, chip.
• synth prompt command: synth preset pad, synth lpf 800 lpenv 3, synth fm 4 fmh 1.5, synth reset. The menu's Parameters section shows the preset and simple parameters, with every parameter under advanced. The agent's new set_synth tool sets the same parameters. Every numeric parameter has a synth-<param> automation lane.
• Older projects and sessions load and sound exactly as before. The dawg SDK is 1.6.0 (additive).

Rhythm (Euclidean rows)

• Drum parts as generators. A kit or oneshot sampler track can carry rhythm rows: euclid("kick", 4, 16), euclid("hat", 7, 16, 2, { swing: 0.15 }), grid("snare", "....X.......x..."). dawg expands them into ordinary notes, so you and the agent edit four numbers instead of sixteen hits, and rendering, sync and diffs are unchanged. Patterns and rotation match Strudel's euclid/euclidRot.
• Torso T-1 parameters: steps, pulses, rotate, division, repeats with time/pace/ramp (rolls that speed up, slow down, build or fade), velocity, accent, gate/legato, seeded probability, swing, nudge and per-pass cycles. The same seed always gives the same hits.
• /euclid editor (also Rhythm in /menu): one row per voice with its step grid. Arrows nudge the selected parameter, Tab moves between parameters, digits type a value, Space auditions. Every change is one undo step.
• Prompt grammar: euclid kick 4 16, euclid hat 7 16 rotate 2, euclid hat swing 0.2, euclid snare off|freeze, grid snare ....X.......x....
• The agent's new set_rhythm tool takes the same rows, and the agent prefers it to hand-placed drum hits.
• Editing a generated lane by hand freezes that row into plain notes. Changing the loop length regenerates rows.

Chords

• Chord engine (core/chords.ts) modelled on the Telepathic Instruments Orchid: four chord types (dim, min, maj, sus) with combinable 6, m7, M7 and 9 extensions, Key-mode diatonic chords for major, minor and the church modes, a voicing dial, voice leading to the nearest inversion, bass, and block, strum, arpeggio and harp performance.
• Progressions. Eleven presets (I–V–vi–IV, ii–V–I, i–VI–III–VII, the Andalusian cadence, …) and pop, jazz, modal and classical styles that walk a weighted functional-harmony graph with a seed, so the same request always gives the same chords.
• Secret chords from the Orchid manual. Two latched chord types now play the official table: dim+sus C5, maj+sus C+, min+sus Cm(add4), min+dim Cm(b6), maj+dim C(b6), maj+min C7♯9 (they replace dawg's earlier guesses).
• Slop perform mode, Orchid's humanised timing: a block chord whose voices land a seeded fraction of up to 1/16 beat late (SDK 1.5.0, perform: "slop").
• Pattern perform mode with thirteen chord rhythms (eighths, offbeat, pop, charleston, bossa, skank, tresillo, oom-pah, …) by name or number: /chords pattern 3, 9 in play mode, the menu, write_chords {perform: "pattern", pattern} and SDK 1.7.0 perform: "pattern", pattern: "bossa".
• Orchid bass modes. Bass is now off, chords, unison, single or solo, as in the Orchid's bass menu: B in play mode cycles them, /chords bass unison, the menu, write_chords {bassMode} and SDK 1.7.0 bass: "solo".
• Agent tools. suggest_progression returns voice-led chords with names, numerals and bass; write_chords writes them to a track (and its bass to another) as block chords, strums, arpeggios or harp sweeps.
• SDK 1.3.0. chord("Cm7") and progression(["ii7", "V7", "Imaj7"], { key, perform }) expand to notes in track.ts files.
• Chord mode in play mode, on by default (auto) for chord-capable tracks: every note key plays the song key's diatonic chord, voice-led from the last one. 1–4 latch dim/min/maj/sus, 5–8 latch 6/m7/M7/9, 0 clears, -/= turn the voicing dial, 9 cycles the perform mode, B toggles bass, N plays the suggested next chord and Q switches auto ⇄ manual. The header shows the mode, key, current chord and the suggestion. Recorded chords keep their strum or arpeggio and sta...

v0.3.0

dawg projects are now plain TypeScript files that you, an agent or another window can edit, with sampler tracks, local media tools, a computer-keyboard play mode and menus for every edit by hand.

Play mode (computer keyboard)

• /play or Ctrl-P turns the computer keyboard into a MIDI keyboard for the focused track: A S D F G H J K L ; ' are white keys from C, W E T Y U O P the black keys, Z/X move an octave, C/V change velocity, Shift sustains and Tab latches sustain. Esc leaves.
• Bass tracks start an octave lower and leads an octave higher; the header shows the range, velocity, record state, click and grid.
• Recording. R arms overdub and Shift-R replaces the bar; notes are quantized to /grid and land as ordinary score edits, so other windows, undo and track.ts all see them. One undo step per recorded bar.
• Click track. M or /click on|off|<volume> toggles a tempo-synced metronome that never reaches renders or exports; /count-in 0|1|2 sets the count-in before recording.
• Sampler tracks play their voices from the keyboard: oneshot voices from MIDI 36, keyed samplers repitched from their root.
• Terminals send no key-up, so held notes last one grid step and extend while the key auto-repeats.

Menus

• /menu [section] or Ctrl-K opens Track, Parameters, Effects, Automation, Mix and Transport. Arrows or j k move, Enter opens or toggles, ← → or + - nudge, digits type a value, / filters, x deletes an automation point, Esc steps back.
• Each row shows its current value and the command it runs; every change is one receipt and one undo step.
• New prompt commands behind the menu: automate <lane> points <b:v>..., automate <lane> remove <beat>, track name <text> and meter <n>.

Performance

• Session records store reverse deltas instead of whole compositions, so a session reaches the 2000-event cap instead of failing around edit 70 (or on the first edit of a 16-bar loop).
• Audio renders run off the main thread with a per-track stem cache: a one-note edit re-renders in about 44 ms instead of blocking for 165–190 ms.
• AI Gateway and OpenRouter requests retry and time out when no response arrives; transport keys no longer wait on the daemon.

Sample playback

• Sampler tracks play. sampler({...}) voices now render in playback, dawg render and exports, with Strudel's semantics: begin/end windows, speed (negative reverses), loop for the note's length, gain, choke groups (Strudel's cut), keyed repitching from root, and oneshot voices on pitch slots from 36. Starts, stops and cuts fade over a few milliseconds. Volume, pan, automation, filter, delay and reverb apply as on any track, and sampler tracks are cached stems keyed by the files' sha256.
• Decoding. WAV (PCM 16/24/32-bit and float32) and AIFF decode natively and resample to the engine rate; MP3, FLAC, Ogg and M4A decode through ffmpeg when it is on PATH, otherwise the voice is skipped with a diagnostic. Decoded audio is cached at .dawg/assets/<sha256>.pcm (512 MiB LRU). Files over 50 MiB or 10 minutes and paths that escape the project, symlinks included, are rejected; a stale sha256 warns and still plays.
• /sample <path> [as <voice>] adds a voice to the focused track (copying the file into tracks/<slug>/samples/ and reprinting track.ts); /sample lists voices. Oneshot samplers get one highway lane per voice, /tracks shows sample counts and missing files, and load problems are receipts.
• dawg render in a project with no --session renders the project files (song.ts).

Sign-in, model picker and spend

• One sign-in picker. dawg login (and the first dawg with no provider) finds what is already set up, in parallel within 4 s: AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, stored keys, a logged-in Vercel CLI, VERCEL_OIDC_TOKEN, and xcb Codex and Claude accounts. It then shows one Codex-style picker (arrows, numbers, Enter), with the first detected option as the default. When one option is ready, it asks Use <it>? [Y/n]. Non-interactive runs pick the best detected option or exit with a hint.
• OpenRouter is a fourth provider. Sign-in is OpenRouter's OAuth PKCE flow (browser plus a 127.0.0.1 callback with a state check, URL printed as a fallback, 5 min timeout), or a pasted key with hidden input. Turns stream with tool calls through the same agent tools as the gateway.
• Subscriptions (dawg login codex, dawg login claude) go through xcb 0.20+: pick the account and model, and dawg runs xcb setup <family> when none is ready. An account is usable iff xcb reports available. Pending admission works, with a longer first call (the child timeout is timeoutMs + 75 s) and busy retried with backoff. Accounts reporting models_unavailable are refreshed once, and dawg auth status prints the xcb version with an upgrade hint below 0.20.0.
• The choice sticks. The provider, model and account are saved in ~/.config/dawg/config.json (0600, atomic, no keys) and reused silently. dawg logout [provider]//logout, dawg login <provider> and /model change it. A saved provider that stops working is reported once and reopens the picker, never swapped.
• /login in the TUI suspends the screen, runs the same flow (browser and vercel login included) and redraws, replacing "run dawg login in a shell".
• Model picker. /model or dawg model lists frontier (Opus 5.5, Fable 5.1, GPT-6.1 Sol, Gemini 3.1 Pro), fast (Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.8 Flash) and open-weight models (DeepSeek V4 Pro, Kimi K3, Qwen3.8 27B, GLM-5.3, Llama 4 Maverick). Only tool-calling models the provider serves are listed. Each row shows an estimated ~$0.004/prompt from models.dev pricing (cached 24 h; OpenRouter's own prices on OpenRouter), and subscriptions list xcb's models as included. Type to filter; the current model is marked. DAWG_MODEL=<unknown> is now an error listing the choices.
• Spend under the prompt. $0.12 session · $0.48 today · opus-5.5 · gateway, from the usage each response reports (include_usage; the provider's cost when given). Today's total is shared across windows through ~/.config/dawg/usage.json. Billed web searches count too. Subscriptions show subscription; with no provider it reads no model · dawg login, the placeholder teaches direct commands and the STEER pill hides. The model shows once, in the header.
• dawg auth status lists all four options with detected, active and validated state.

npm

@hraness/dawg is on npm: npm i -g @hraness/dawg or bun add -g @hraness/dawg, alongside the install script and the GitHub Release tarball.

UX review fixes

• /track <name> (and bare track <name>) focuses the track in this window, creating it when new; a track another window has open answers <name> is open in another window. The quickstart track drums → pattern kick … now works.
• Receipts carry their outcome structurally, so main is not a drum track, no kick hits, score is full and friends render as errors instead of green checks.
• An unknown /word is rejected locally and a known verb with bad arguments (pan 3, volume 2, add H4 at 0, /export with no file) gets usage; neither reaches the model.
• /help (or ?) opens a grouped, scrollable overlay listing every command once; /sessions and /tracks open the same overlay and leave one summary card.
• dawg --version; unknown subcommands and options are rejected before .dawg/ is created; the launch that creates .dawg/ says created .dawg/ · add it to .gitignore; dawg --session <typo> is an error instead of a silent new session; render --help and sessions --help.
• /resume <n> accepts any list index as well as a name or id prefix.
• Errors share one shape, <what> · <why> · <next step> (no such file · nope.json).
• The ^z undo hint rides only on receipts that changed the score, and only the first three in a session.
• An empty track shows main · empty · add C4 at 0 to start instead of stray lane labels.
• /status says shared via dawgd or saved locally · no daemon; auto-names announce as <name> (auto-named) · rename with /rename <name>.
• Docs: header order frozen in a test and corrected, render is stereo, the meta frame is listed, one environment table.

Agent workspace and web tools

The agent can now work with the project directory and the web. list_files and read_file cover the whole project except .dawg/; write_file and edit_file are limited to song.ts and the focused track's tracks/<slug>/ directory, write atomically and cap sizes. web_search answers through the AI Gateway's server-side search tools when a gateway key is configured (DAWG_WEB_SEARCH picks exa, perplexity, parallel or browserbase), through OpenRouter's web plugin when an OpenRouter key exists, and otherwise through DuckDuckGo; BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY overrides the chain. fetch_url reads one public page with private-address blocking and bounded output. The composition brief includes a bounded project tree and the head of the focused track's notes.md. New trackSlug() in core/slug.ts and an optional onWorkspaceWrite host hook.

Project files

• dawg init [dir] creates a project: dawg.json, tsconfig.json, song.ts, tracks/, a vendored typed SDK in .dawg/sdk/v1.ts and .gitignore lines. It is idempotent and refreshes the SDK only for a newer 1.x.
• Every window keeps song.ts and tracks/<slug>/track.ts in two-way sync with the session: file edits apply as one files.apply revision (applied from files · …, or files rejected · <file:line:col …>), and score edits reprint only the files that changed.
• dawg check typechecks (native TypeScript 7, incremental) and evaluates the project; the header shows types ✓ or types ✗ N. Agent writes to project sources report the apply outcome and type errors in the tool result.
• Score: o...

v0.2.0

The first tagged release. Open a session in several terminals, give each window its own instrument, let an agent write parts, and every window stays on the same song.

Renamed from Track to dawg

The project, CLI and package are now dawg: the command is dawg, the daemon dawgd, the package @hraness/dawg and the repository hraness/dawg (the old hraness/track URLs redirect). Environment variables are DAWG_*, workspace state lives in .dawg/, config in ~/.config/dawg, and gateway keys in the Keychain service dawg (new keys are named dawg-<host>).

Install

curl -fsSL https://dawg.sh/install | sh
# or
bun add -g https://github.com/hraness/dawg/releases/download/v0.2.0/hraness-dawg-0.2.0.tgz

Added

• Stereo renderer. Renders and dawg render WAVs are now interleaved stereo with equal-power pan, a ping-pong stereo delay and a stereo reverb, and stay byte-identical across runs.
• Reverb send. reverb <mix> [size] / reverb off per track, a deterministic Freeverb-style network (eight damped combs and four allpasses per channel). The agent's set_effects tool takes reverb {mix, size} or null.
• More automation lanes. automate resonance|delay-feedback|delay-mix at <beat> <value> (and clear <lane> automation), validated by the planner and available to the agent's set_automation tool.
• Gapless audio engine. Playback streams a seamless loop as raw PCM into one long-lived ffplay (or SoX play) process. Edits, tempo changes and seeks swap the buffer in place without restarting playback, and the write position stays anchored to the shared transport clock. On macOS without either, afplay replays a re-rendered loop. dawg auth status and /auth show the backend; DAWG_AUDIO_BACKEND and DAWG_AUDIO_PLAYER override it.
• Drums and effects (#8). A kit instrument with kick, rim, snare, clap, hats and tom, written with hit <voice> at <beat>, pattern <voice> <beats...> or pattern <voice> every <step>. A track named drums gets the kit automatically. Per-track low-pass filter (filter <hz> [res]), tempo-synced delay (delay <beats> [fb] [mix]), filter automation, solo/unsolo and redo.
• Streaming agent (#9). Requests that aren't direct commands go to a streaming, tool-calling agent on Vercel AI Gateway (opus-5.5 or sol-6.1, switch with /model). It edits only through typed, validated tools, and each accepted call becomes its own revision. Esc cancels and keeps what was accepted. Enter steers the turn in progress.
• dawgd (#10). One local daemon per session, started by the first window. Every window sees the same revisions, presence and transport, so play in one window plays everywhere. It recovers from crashes, and if the daemon can't start, windows fall back to the file lock. dawg sessions lists the sessions in a workspace.
• New terminal UI (#11). A highway where notes stream toward a hit line, with sustain beams, hit bursts and drum lanes. It adds an activity strip of operation cards, a themed multiline prompt with steer and queue modes, and a transcript (Ctrl+O or /log). Themes are /theme default|high-contrast|mono. /motion off or --reduce-motion gives static states. NO_COLOR is respected.
• Login and providers (#12). dawg login creates an AI Gateway key with the Vercel CLI, or takes a pasted key. dawg login --xcb uses a Claude, Codex or Devin subscription through xcb. dawg auth status and dawg logout manage it. Keys are kept in the macOS Keychain or a 0600 file and never in .dawg/.
• Named sessions (#13). Sessions are named automatically from what you play, and you can rename them with /rename <name> (or hand the name back with /rename --auto). /fork [name] branches a song (night drive → night drive 2). /sessions lists them and /resume picks one. Plain dawg windows claim the next open track, so three windows on a three-track song restore drums, bass and keys, and a fourth gets a draft track.
• dawg render <out.wav> writes the current session (or --session, or --import file.track.json) to a WAV without starting audio. The same score always produces the same bytes, and the sha256 is printed.
• /status shows the session name, revision, composition digest and whether the window is on dawgd or the file fallback.
• An end-to-end suite that runs real dawg windows in PTYs against a live dawgd, now part of bun run check and CI.

Fixed

• In demo mode, --track drums seeded the melodic demo notes, which played as rim hits. It now seeds a kick, snare and hat groove.

Not yet

• dawg is not published to npm. Install from the GitHub Release tarball until a trusted publisher is configured.