Ableton Project Manager MCP

Tool · 2025

Model Context Protocol server for safely scanning and analyzing Ableton Live projects. Find recent sessions, extract metadata, analyze project characteristics — all through Claude's conversational interface.

Features

  • Safe Scanning: Built-in limits prevent scanning massive directories — file count limits, size limits, depth limits
  • Project Analysis: Extract BPM, track counts, and metadata from .als files
  • Recent Projects: Quickly find what you've been working on lately
  • Smart Skipping: Ignores common heavy folders (Backup, Samples, Library)
  • Conversational Interface: Ask Claude to "show me my recent projects" or "analyze the top 3"

How It Works

The server provides three MCP tools that Claude can use:

  • scan_projects — Scans a directory for all .als files with basic info
  • analyze_projects — Deep analysis of specific projects (BPM, tracks, metadata)
  • find_recent — Quick access to recently modified projects

Ableton .als files are gzipped XML. The server safely decompresses and parses them to extract metadata without requiring Ableton to be running.

Safety First

Built with configurable safety constraints:

  • File limit: Stops after 100 .als files (configurable)
  • Size limit: Skips files over 50MB (configurable)
  • Depth limit: Only scans 3 folders deep (configurable)
  • Max analysis: 20 projects per call
  • Temp files always cleaned up, even on error

Use Cases

Ask Claude:

  • "Show me my recent music projects in ~/Music/Ableton"
  • "Analyze the top 3 and tell me which one I should finish"
  • "What are my 5 most recent projects and their BPMs?"
  • "Find all projects modified in the last week"

Links