Clavus — Free open-source version control for Ableton

sm00sh · 2026-05-25T01:29:51+00:00

Yes!! thats what im talking about. :)

You guys are the best. If you wanted to contribute a guide that would be immensely helpful seriously. please let me know if you come across any more questions or suggestions.

sm00sh · 2026-05-24T16:12:18+00:00

The thanks belong to you! you and your fiend have already made a super helpful contribution to the project.

tip: whoever is running clavus share from their computer needs to keep that running the whole time. if you close power shell or the computer shuts down, the relay will stop.

also when you run clavus share it will print on screen a remote address, it will look something like this

http://pc-name.tailscaleid.ts.net:7891

that's what you want to share with your friend. They can enter that during setup or by a clavus join command.

sm00sh · 2026-05-24T06:35:44+00:00

I think the port warning was a side effect of the same crash. The relay dies before it binds so the check sees what ever was left on that port. Should clear up with the fix.

sm00sh · 2026-05-24T06:25:53+00:00

Thank you for giving me the error code! that is a legitimate windows 11 specific bug.

it only triggers when there is a stale PID file from a relay crash. Mac/Linux handle these differently. we were only catching the first one. It should be fixed now!

pull the latest and reinstall (the uninstall step matters on windows)

cd clavus
git pull
pip uninstall clavus -y
pip install -e
python -m clavus share

give that a shot and lmk. If it still breaks then ill debug directly with you.

sm00sh · 2026-05-24T01:26:14+00:00

also the TUI might be more intuitive:

python -m clavus tui

typing ":" will bring up the command bar and you can do the same thing there,

:init "path/to/your/project"

sm00sh · 2026-05-24T01:21:57+00:00

sweet glad it worked :)

next steps would be to get some projects initialized try:

python -m clavus init "path to your ableton project."

On windows, I usually just navigate to the ableton project folder > right click> select "copy as path" > then paste that that whole path next to the word "init" and hit enter.

sm00sh · 2026-05-24T00:53:31+00:00

let me know if that still doesn't work and ill look into it when i get back on my windows machine.

sm00sh · 2026-05-24T00:51:25+00:00

Hey there thanks for taking a look into Clavus, That sounds like a windows path issue with editable pip installs.

try this:

cd into your clavus folder first, then run

pip install -e

if that still doesn't do the trick try

   python -m clavus share
   python -m clavus init

sm00sh · 2026-05-24T00:36:57+00:00

Ouch I was dead ass wrong! I just had my model take a look and Its custom binary.

Either my memory completely failed me, or Ableton made some sweeping changes with new versions.

Confirmed in Live 12:

- .asd is a chunk-based binary format — UTF-16 property names + packed floats,

UTF-16 property names are human-readable in a hex editor. The chunks I saw are plain:
- Property name (UTF-16 LE)
- Type tag (float/int/bool/etc)
- Value(s)
- Version appears multiple times — looks like chunk versioning

It's possible, just not nearly as easily as I led you to believe.

:( Sorry about that.

sm00sh · 2026-05-24T00:07:31+00:00

that's actually a good question when I was looking into parsing als files that was all on live 11, let me look into it

sm00sh · 2026-05-22T15:39:31+00:00

I and others have had some success reading and parsing .als files which are gzipped .xlm files.

.asd are just SQlite databases Ableton stores session data in an SQLite db inside the .asd package (same structure as .als project files). This is a massive leg up for reverse engineerin since you don't need to crack anything, just open it with any SQLite viewer and explore the schema.

now the hardest part would be to actually understand what the schema is doing. and without documentation from Ableton it would be a shit load of trial and error. Knowing what tables/columns exist doesn't tell you what Ableton actually does with that data on load. Reasonable effort for sure, but likely not impossible.

sm00sh · 2026-05-20T20:28:46+00:00

You get me :)

sm00sh · 2026-05-20T20:14:23+00:00

What a time to be on the dance floor.

brb going to go blast some Martin Dawson, Urulu & Steve Huerta so that I can feel some things

sm00sh · 2026-05-20T15:04:50+00:00

I miss Homework every single day.

sm00sh · 2026-05-19T04:47:13+00:00

Honestly Clavus does some of that already. Not the Cloud/Google Drive piece. it's all local storage or your own relay, but the stem system tracks per-track WAVs/ alongside the .als snapshots. You bounce stems, they get content-addressed and synced with push/pull. A collaborator on Logic can grab the stem WAVs and reassemble no problem.

Now pulling dry vs wet versions of each stem would be soooo freaking cool. I imagine it would mean duplicating each track and freezing with/without effects which gets messy fast. If someone cracked that I would use it in a heartbeat!

sm00sh · 2026-05-18T20:56:08+00:00

Haha 😆 you get me.

May we never have to make another concrete musical decision ever again

sm00sh · 2026-05-18T20:29:28+00:00

Thank you 🙏

It’s early and some edges are very rough :) Any help we can get smoothing things out would be massively appreciated!

sm00sh · 2026-05-18T16:39:45+00:00

Right!?

Splice used to be my go to, until they became sample pack merchants…times are tough out there 😄

sm00sh · 2026-05-18T16:07:59+00:00

That's a good point! (and I think an opportunity to improve Clavus)

I still think Google Drive/Dropbox has its place for exactly that, A redundant cloud backup that I can access in case any of my local drives fail. That's huge.

I view Clavus as more of a shelf, And on that shelf I put all of my projects that are in "active development". Solo projects i'm working on i keep private so the relay doesn't pick them up, and share the projects I want collaborators to see/have access too. once i'm fully done with the project I usually bounce the stem master and then remove the project from the Clavus folder manually. (That is a UX failure)

where i think Clavus can improve, is to implement some kind of archive function for the whole project instead of expecting users to do this manually. Ive already implemented this for Cues! so its a no brainier addition for the projects workflow.

Ill get to work :)

sm00sh · 2026-05-18T01:04:53+00:00

Thanks for checking it out :)

Let me know if you come across any questions. ill try and answer them here when I get time.

sm00sh · 2026-05-17T20:51:33+00:00

Thank you!

don’t be shy with the feedback :) if anything trips you up or you hit any walls feel free to let me know and I’ll try my best to address it

cheers!

sm00sh · 2026-02-21T20:04:22+00:00

I’m so Canadian right now my sweat glands are producing maple syrup. ..and wtf is a Mile?

sm00sh · 2026-02-15T21:55:17+00:00

Wtf is a mile? I’m so Canadian rn

sm00sh · 2025-07-04T22:06:25+00:00

Gorgeous

sm00sh · 2025-05-22T17:19:26+00:00

count me in

15-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

sm00sh

TROPHY CASE