Stratawright: The Open-Source AI DAW for Agentic Music Production

Stratawright

Overview

You opened your DAW to create music—not to burn half your brain on shortcuts, modifier keys, and complex control interfaces. Let tools serve your creativity, not your memory.

Stratawright is an agentic DAW that your AI agent can natively control so you can focus purely on making music. Instead of spending 30 minutes manually levelling tracks for streaming, removing background noise from recordings, or routing effect plugins across every track, just tell your AI agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Hermes, or Gemini) what you want in plain English. Your session gets prepped, balanced, and ready for production in seconds.

Why an Agentic DAW?

Traditional DAWs were built for a keyboard-and-mouse era where every single operation required manual labor. As sessions grow to 100+ tracks, your creative energy gets drained by repetitive mechanical tasks.

Quick Start & Agentic Setup

No terminal commands or manual compilation required. Open your AI agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Hermes, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, and 50+ more) and tell it to handle the setup:

1. Clone the Repository

Clone the project repository to your local system:

git clone https://github.com/Goldwaterfung/Stratawright.git
cd Stratawright

Or tell your AI agent:

Clone https://github.com/Goldwaterfung/Stratawright and set up the project for me

2. Build & Setup Stratawright (Agent compiles the app)

Tell your agent:

Build and package Stratawright for me

(Your agent will automatically run ./scripts/install_dependencies.sh and ./scripts/build.sh release --package under the hood).

3. Install the Skill (Teaches your agent how to control DAW)

Install directly via skills.sh (Vercel Agent Skills Registry):

npx skills add Goldwaterfung/Stratawright/skills/daw-cli

Or tell your AI agent in chat:

Install the daw-cli skill from https://github.com/Goldwaterfung/Stratawright

To manually install the skill into your preferred AI agent framework, copy or symlink the skills/daw-cli/ directory:

Once installed, your agent uses skills/daw-cli/SKILL.md as its operational manual.

Showcase Use Cases

Below are real-time demonstrations of daw-cli executing agentic workflows in Stratawright.

🎬 Use Case 1: Instant Multi-Track Ingestion, Clip Placement & Auto-Coloring

Natural Language Prompt:
"Import all the audio files in /Volumes/AudioDrives/Stems/Song_Session_A/. Place all clips at the start of the timeline. Clean up all the dirty file extensions and underscores in the track names, and auto-color the tracks based on their instrument types so my session is clean and organized."

• Key Commands: daw-cli track create, daw-cli clip add-audio, daw-cli track sanitize-names, daw-cli track auto-color

🎬 Use Case 2: Multi-Track Session Orchestration & Fader Layout

Natural Language Prompt:
"Set up a 124 BPM session with an 8-piece drum kit: Kick, Snare Top, Snare Bottom, Hi-Hat, Tom 1, Tom 2, and stereo Overheads. Color them automatically, set all faders to -6 dB for headroom, and pan the overheads 100% left and right."

• Key Commands: daw-cli transport set-tempo, daw-cli track create-batch, daw-cli track auto-color, daw-cli track set-gain, daw-cli track set-pan

🎬 Use Case 3: Selective Stem Ingestion, Synth Plugin Instantiation & Submix Routing

Natural Language Prompt:
"Inspect the stems in /Volumes/AudioDrives/Stems/Song_Session_A/stems and my installed plugin library. Set up a professional Synth Rock mix for me. Import only the drum and guitar stems, instantiate Serum 2 for 'Sub Bass' and 'Synth Bass'. Construct a professional submix group setup."

• Key Commands: daw-cli plugin scan, daw-cli plugin add, daw-cli route folder, daw-cli prep gain-stage

Agentic Command Examples

Here is what working in Stratawright with an AI assistant looks like:

User    ❯ Set tempo to 128 BPM, set up tracks for Kick, Snare, HH, and Tom, and balance their volume levels.

Agent   ❯ [Strata Agentic Engine]
          ✓ Set session tempo to 128.0 BPM (4/4 time signature)
          ✓ Created 4 audio tracks: Kick, Snare, HH, Tom
          ✓ Balanced volume levels across tracks 1..4 to prevent clipping
          Done. Ready for your arrangement pass.

User    ❯ Add a FabFilter Pro-Q 3 equalizer to the Snare track and copy the chain to the Tom tracks.

Agent   ❯ [Strata Agentic Engine]
          ✓ Scanned VST3/AU host plugins
          ✓ Inserted 'FabFilter Pro-Q 3' into slot 0 on Track 2 (Snare)
          ✓ Copied insert chain from Track 2 to Tracks 3..4

Key Features

What Your AI Agent Can Do in Stratawright

Instead of manually clicking through complex menus, searching for shortcuts, or tweaking individual knobs, you command your AI assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Hermes, Gemini, etc.) in plain English. Here is what your assistant can do in your session right now:

🚀 Available AI Session Commands

• Session State & Transport: Set project tempo, update time signatures, jump playhead position, play/pause/stop transport.
• Track Setup & Leveling: Add audio/instrument tracks, set track volume & pan, mute/solo tracks, run automatic gain staging.
• Plugin Management: Insert VST3/AU plugins, tweak normalized parameters, copy plugin chains from one track to another.
• Timeline & MIDI Editing: Place audio clips, set start offsets & durations, program MIDI notes, transpose melodies.
• Bus Submixing & Auxiliary FX Routing: Redirect track outputs to folder group buses, configure pre/post auxiliary FX sends, link plugin sidechain compression triggers.
• Non-Visual DSP Analysis & Audio Intelligence: Audit Bark-scale frequency masking, detect resonant peaks, evaluate multi-track phase correlation matrices & sample-accurate offsets, stream live LUFS/dBTP telemetry, inspect 7-band spectral energy, and audit stereo width & mono compatibility.

Developer Guide & Building from Source

Stratawright is an open-source, high-performance C++20 DAW engine built for AI-driven music production. AI agents control the DAW via the skills/daw-cli/SKILL.md skill definition.

Prerequisites

The project uses vcpkg in manifest mode to manage dependencies.

Required Tools

• CMake 3.20 or higher
• Git
• C++20 compatible compiler: Clang 12+, GCC 11+, or MSVC 2022+

Automatic Setup

Run the setup script to install dependencies and libraries (RtAudio, RtMidi, libsndfile, nlohmann_json, spdlog, Catch2):

./scripts/install_dependencies.sh

Build Instructions

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/Goldwaterfung/Stratawright.git
   cd Stratawright
   

2. Configure and build:

   mkdir -p build/debug && cd build/debug
   cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../../
   cmake --build . --parallel
   

3. Run application:

   ./bin/stratawright
   

Build Options

Testing & Release Builds

# Build & run unit tests
./scripts/build.sh debug --test

# Build release binary
./scripts/build.sh release

# Packaged release
./scripts/build.sh release --package

Development & Roadmap

Agentic Layer (daw-cli) Feature Status

• Session State & Transport (status, transport) - Fully Implemented
• Tracks & Gain-Staging (track, prep) - Fully Implemented
• VST3 / AU Plugin Host Management (plugin) - Fully Implemented
• Clips & Timeline Editing (clip, midi) - Fully Implemented
• Bus Submixing & Auxiliary FX Routing (route) - Fully Implemented
• Non-Visual DSP Analysis & Audio Intelligence (analyze) - Fully Implemented
• Stem Exports & Asynchronous Render Jobs (export, job) - In Progress

License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Acknowledgments

Architecture inspired by:
Ardour (libardour) • Bitwig Studio • Reaper • JUCE Framework