Quickstart - Vibrai

This page shows the same task — a house arrangement — done two ways: from the terminal and from an AI chat. Both paths produce the same result in Live. Before you start: Ableton Live must be open with the Vibrai M4L device loaded on a track. See Installation if you haven’t done that yet.

First arrangement

# 1. See what genres are available
vibrai genre list

# 2. Check presets for house
vibrai genre presets house

# 3. Create a project file from a preset
vibrai project init --project my-song.vibrai --genre house --preset "Tech 1"

# 4. Dry-run to see what will be generated
vibrai generate --project my-song.vibrai --dry-run

# 5. Render into Live, loading a default instrument on each track
vibrai generate --project my-song.vibrai --force --with-instruments

# 6. Start playback
vibrai transport play

Open Claude Desktop and type:

  Set up a new project — house, short. Let's hear what you've got.

Claude assembles a complete project and saves it, then loads
instruments, generates the parts, and starts playback.

The whole flow takes about 30–60 seconds. You don't need to
click anything in Live.

--with-instruments loads a default instrument on each track so the arrangement makes sound immediately — without it, generate writes MIDI to empty tracks. To load defaults onto an existing arrangement instead, use vibrai device load-defaults (or the load_default_instruments MCP tool).

What you get

After generate completes, Live’s session view has one scene per section (named after each section) and one clip per track per scene, filled with MIDI notes. The arrangement view has the same clips laid out left to right.

Try a different seed

The generator is deterministic: same project file + same seed = same output. To get a fresh variation without changing the structure:

vibrai generate --project my-song.vibrai --force --seed 42

Each integer seed gives a different but reproducible result.

Capture what you built

If you’ve been working in Live by hand and want a project file:

vibrai capture --out my-session.vibrai

Capture what I have here into a project file called my-session.vibrai.

What’s next

CLI Overview

Global flags, JSON output, exit codes, and the full branch structure.

MCP Overview

How tools map to engine operations and the snake_case convention.

Concepts

.vibrai files, generators, theme & variation.

Troubleshooting

Bridge connection issues and common error messages.

​First arrangement

​What you get

​Try a different seed

​Capture what you built

​What’s next

CLI Overview

MCP Overview

Concepts

Troubleshooting

First arrangement

What you get

Try a different seed

Capture what you built

What’s next