Ableton MCP connects Ableton Live to an AI assistant through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), so you can produce music by prompt. From a chat in Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Claude Code, an assistant can read the current session, create tracks and clips, load instruments and effects, write MIDI notes, control playback, and compose full songs in Arrangement View.
It has two parts: a MIDI Remote Script that runs inside Ableton Live as a control surface and opens a socket server, and a Python MCP server that talks to it with a JSON-based protocol over TCP. The two share a version handshake so newer tools degrade gracefully when the script is out of date. It works with Live 10 or newer and is aimed at Ableton's default devices and browser items. Complex arrangements may need to be built in smaller steps.
Anonymous usage telemetry (which tools ran and whether they succeeded) is on by default and can be disabled. A separate opt-in mode records prompts, MIDI, and track details for an open music-production dataset. The project is a third-party integration, not made by Ableton.
Features
- Session information: reads session and track details from the open Live set
- Track manipulation: creates and modifies MIDI and audio tracks
- Instruments and effects: loads devices, sounds, and drum racks from Ableton's library
- Clip editing: creates, edits, and fires MIDI clips and writes notes into them
- Arrangement composition: builds full songs with sections such as intro, buildup, drop, breakdown, and outro
- Transport control: starts and stops playback and changes tempo and other session parameters
- MCP clients: works with Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Claude Code
- Telemetry controls: anonymous telemetry that can be turned off, and opt-in dataset recording
