Live Jev

September 20, 2026 · View on GitHub

Control Ableton Live with one short sentence.

Press ⌘⇧Space while you work in Live and a small bar appears on top of it. Type (or dictate) something like “turn it down 3 dB”, “Serum 2 on a new track”, or “quantize to 1/16”, then hit Enter. The bar disappears instantly, Live stays in front, and the change is applied. The bar only comes back when it needs to ask you something.

English and Japanese are both supported, with many ways to say the same thing.

Status: early (0.1x). It works end to end, but there is no installer yet — setup takes a few terminal commands. 1.00 will be the first packaged release.

What it can do

  • Mixer — volume, pan, mute, solo, arm, monitoring, sends (“mute”, “down by 3 dB”, “pan left 20”, “send A up a bit”). If you don’t name a track, it acts on the selected one.
  • Transport — play, stop, record, loop, metronome, tempo, jump to bar, undo/redo, capture MIDI.
  • Clips and scenes — launch and stop, loop, warp, pitch, gain.
  • Notes — quantize (1/4 to 1/32, triplets, strength), legato, transpose by octaves or semitones, velocity, double the loop.
  • Devices — insert plug-ins and Live’s own devices (“new track with Omnisphere”, “add EQ Eight”), turn devices on and off. Candidates come from your Live browser, so whatever you own just works. New tracks land where Live would put them and get Live’s default names.
  • Tracks — add and rename.
  • Several tracks at once — mute, solo or arm a range, everything, or everything but one (“mute tracks 3 to 6”, “unsolo all”, “mute everything except Drums”, “solo only Bass”).
  • Chains — up to four commands in one sentence, in order (“mute Pad and lower Bass by 3 dB”, “mute Pad, then solo Drums and arm Bass”). Every part is checked first; if one part is unclear, nothing runs. If a later part fails, the earlier ones are put back. Works in Japanese too.
  • Everything can be undone (the arrow in the bar, or ⌘Z).

How it works

  • Meaning is decided by Jev, a small, fast model from TypeSafe that picks from a list of choices. Fixed phrases are answered locally without calling Jev at all. No LLM is involved; when Live Jev is unsure, it asks.
  • Live is driven through one small Python Remote Script (LiveJev) that runs inside Live. No Max for Live required. A command takes about 20 ms; reading the whole set takes about 10 ms.
  • The bar is Swift (AppKit). The background service is Python 3.13, standard library only.

Getting started

Before you start

  • Live Jev needs your own API key for TypeSafe’s Jev model. Sign in at https://console.typesafe.ai/ to create one; the docs are at https://docs.typesafe.ai/. It is a paid API — TypeSafe’s site listed $42 per billion input tokens in September 2026 (one command is a few hundred tokens). Check their site for current pricing.
  • Live needs a one-time setup: a small Remote Script is copied into Live’s User Library and selected in Live’s settings. Nothing needs to be added to your sets.
  • Live Jev is distributed as source. You build the app on your own Mac with a few Terminal commands, so you can read and change everything it does.

Requirements

  • Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later), macOS 14 or later, Ableton Live 12 (Suite not required)
  • Homebrew and the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
  • A TypeSafe API key

The step-by-step guide, with a check for every step, is in INSTALL.md. You can also hand that file to an AI coding assistant and ask it to set things up for you.

Quick start

brew install python@3.13
git clone https://github.com/okinaaudio/live-jev.git ~/live-jev
cd ~/live-jev

# the Remote Script that runs inside Live
mkdir -p ~/Music/Ableton/User\ Library/Remote\ Scripts/LiveJev
cp remote_script/LiveJev/*.py ~/Music/Ableton/User\ Library/Remote\ Scripts/LiveJev/

# your key (replace YOUR_KEY)
echo 'export TYPESAFE_API_KEY="YOUR_KEY"' >> ~/.zshrc

# build the app → ~/Applications/Live Jev.app
bash scripts/build-app.sh

Do not move or delete the cloned folder after building — the app runs daemon.py from it.

Then, in Live: Settings → Link, Tempo & MIDI → Control Surface → choose LiveJev in a free slot → restart Live. Open ~/Applications/Live Jev.app (a waveform icon appears in the menu bar; there is no Dock icon), bring Live to the front, and press ⌘⇧Space.

The first launch opens a Setup window that checks the Remote Script, the connection to Live and your API key, and can store the key in the macOS Keychain. The menu bar icon lets you reopen it, switch the language (Automatic / Japanese / English) and launch at login.

About your plug-ins

  • There is nothing to import. Live Jev reads the plug-in list from your own Live browser (Plug-ins, Instruments, Audio Effects, MIDI Effects) the first time you ask for a plug-in, in under a second, and remembers it. Only what you own becomes a candidate.
  • The plug-in has to show up in Live’s browser (VST3/AU enabled and scanned in Live’s plug-in settings).
  • Full names (Serum 2), partial names (serum) and nicknames all work. To pin a nickname, add it to plugin_aliases.json, for example {"valhalla": "ValhallaVintageVerb"}.
  • When a plug-in is installed in several formats, Live Jev loads VST3 first, then AU, then VST2. Change the order with LIVE_JEV_PLUGIN_FORMATS, for example au,vst3,vst.
  • Generic words such as “reverb”, “compressor” or “EQ” never insert anything; Live Jev suggests names instead.
  • After installing a new plug-in, restart Live and reopen Live Jev.
  • The author’s plug-in list is not in this repository. Product names in the tests are examples.

What leaves your Mac

  • The TypeSafe API receives the sentence you typed and the names in the set you have open that are needed to understand it (track, device, parameter, clip and scene names; plug-in names from your Live browser when you ask for a plug-in by name). No audio, no audio files, no project data.
  • There is no other network traffic. Everything between Live Jev and Live stays on your Mac (127.0.0.1).

Safety

  • Only an allow-list of operations can be sent to Live. Deleting tracks or clips and free-form note writing are not possible.
  • “Don’t …” is never executed. If you name a track that does not exist, nothing is written — it never falls back to another track. If you name no track, the selected track is used.
  • A sentence with several commands is never half-executed: every part is checked before anything is written, and a failure puts the earlier parts back.
  • Undo restores the values Live Jev read just before it wrote. It does not rely on Live’s own undo history, which does not record mute, solo or arm.
  • A question from Live Jev (“Which track?”) expires after about 20 seconds, so an old question can never swallow your next command.
  • Your API key is read from the environment (or your shell profile) at run time and is never written to a file.

Make it yours

Everything is plain Python and Swift, and you build it yourself, so changing it is expected.

  • Nicknames for your plug-ins — plugin_aliases.json next to daemon.py, for example {"valhalla": "ValhallaVintageVerb"}.
  • Nicknames for your tracks — aliases.json next to daemon.py, for example {"Lead Vox": ["vocals", "the singer"]}. Live Jev passes them to Jev together with the track names.
  • More ways to say something — English wording lives in the ENGLISH_PHRASES table at the top of intent_en.py; Japanese wording lives in the patterns in intent.py. Anything the local patterns do not catch goes to Jev.
  • The text of replies — messages.py, one entry per message with ja and en.
  • New operations — add the action to actions.py and to the allow-list in bridge_client.py (and remote_script/LiveJev/lom_protocol.py if Live needs a new call). Only allow-listed operations can ever reach Live.
  • Check your change — run the unit tests, then the real-Live regression below. Python changes take effect when you quit and reopen the app; Swift changes need bash scripts/build-app.sh; Remote Script changes need a Live restart.

Development

/opt/homebrew/bin/python3.13 -m unittest discover -s tests
bash scripts/build-app.sh
  • Real-Live regression: open an empty Live set, add a MIDI track named LJ-TEST plus two more tracks and a return, select one of them, then run python3 scripts/live_regression.py --check (read-only) and python3 scripts/live_regression.py. It refuses to send anything to a set without the marker track, restores every change, and compares the set before and after.
  • Your own signed build: no binaries are published here. If you want a self-contained app for your own use or your team, scripts/release.sh bundles a standalone Python, signs with your Developer ID, scans the bundle for private paths, and notarizes a .dmg. See RELEASING.md.

An optional LLM rewrite lane (llm_rewrite.py) is still in the code but off by default (LIVE_JEV_LLM=1 to try it).

License

MIT License © 2026 Okina Audio