openDAW and AI

People ask us how openDAW relates to AI. Here is the honest answer.

We use AI to build openDAW

Yes, we do. New features in openDAW are now largely implemented by Claude.

But openDAW is not vibe coded. The foundation was laid when AI was not yet capable of building anything like it. That gave us the time to define the architecture, the framework and a strict code style, shaped by more than 25 years of building web apps and web audio tools. That foundation is what makes the difference today.

With these guardrails in place, AI writes the code we would have written ourselves, only much faster. It also lets us tackle features that would have been out of reach for a small team, because they lie outside our own expertise. All code is developed test-driven, so every feature has to prove itself before it lands.

The best evidence that this works: for two years now, we have not needed any major refactoring to expand the feature set. openDAW keeps scaling with new requirements and features, and the codebase still looks like it was written by one hand.

openDAW will not generate your music

openDAW will not implement generative AI to create audio files, songs or music loops. There are plenty of tools out there for that, and we have no interest in competing with them. More importantly, we do not think that typing a prompt and receiving a finished track is making music at all.

openDAW focuses on what a DAW is for: giving you the instruments, effects and tools to make music yourself. You stay in charge of the creative process. That matters even more to us because so many people learn music production with openDAW, in schools, in workshops and at home.

Where we do use neural networks

Some tasks are tools, not creative decisions. Separating an audio file into stems, or turning audio into MIDI, are good examples. Here neural networks are simply the best technology available, and we use them (or will in upcoming releases) to help you work with your own material.

Bring your own AI

Coding AIs build your own devices

openDAW is open. The scriptable devices and the built-in script editor let anyone write their own instruments, effects and MIDI processors. We are pleased to see that coding AIs are lowering the threshold here. People who have never written a line of code can now create their own special devices, tailored exactly to the music they want to make.

Generative AI is your choice

The script editor is also an entry point for generative AI. You can let an AI write a device that generates audio, or remote-control the creation and modification of a project. We don't prevent any of this. Whether and how you use AI in your own music is your decision, not ours.

What matters is this: openDAW itself will not include easy prompting to generate audio files. There will be no text box that turns a prompt into a finished song or loop.