Vivid

Vivid is an agent-first audiovisual environment: a real macOS C++ application that joins two best-in-class surfaces — a DAW (tracks × scenes of clips, each track an instrument + FX chain, with a mixer) and a rewireable visuals node-graph (generator → FX → … → Output) — through a bidirectional mapping bridge, and drives all of it MCP-natively so a coding agent can author sessions, patch the graph, and wire audio↔visual mappings over a control API.

The application lives under app/ (GLFW + wgpu-native/Metal + miniaudio + VST3). The agent bridge lives under mcp/. This is the product trunk; the Session View DAW, the visuals graph, and the bridge are all implemented and running today — not a future target.

Build & run (macOS)

cmake -S app -B app/build && cmake --build app/build -j
app/build/vivid.app/Contents/MacOS/vivid          # control server logs on 127.0.0.1:9876
uv run --directory mcp vivid_mcp.py               # the MCP bridge (the app must be running)

The control server keeps draining while the app is backgrounded, so an agent can drive it over MCP without the window frontmost (see app/README.md).

Where to start

• CLAUDE.md — repo navigation + current status (the fastest orientation).
• app/ARCHITECTURE.md — the two-surfaces + bridge design, the thread/ownership seams (App/Window, audio vs UI thread), and the control-server flow.
• app/README.md — build, run, tests, sanitizers, CI.
• mcp/README.md — the agent tool surface.
• docs/decisions/ — the ADRs. Recent load-bearing ones: ADR-0009 (two surfaces + bridge), ADR-0011 (productization target), ADR-0012 (per-track audio graph), ADR-0013 (focus-first UI).

History & references

• The mature predecessor is preserved on the vivid-classic branch (tagged vivid-classic-final) — the engineering benchmark and parts bin, not the architecture to renovate in place.
• Early Vivid-4 planning artifacts (the pre-runtime PRD, the Session-View pressure-test prototypes, and the original phased plan) live under docs/ as historical evidence of how the product was reasoned into being — they predate the current trunk and are not the current spec. Prefer CLAUDE.md + app/ARCHITECTURE.md + the ADRs for current truth.