Journal
Development notes, experiments, and process from the Nucleic lab.
ChordCast: machines talking in C minor
This is a live screen-and-sound recording of three local AI agents—Ada, Babbage and Curie—holding an open-ended philosophical discussion.
There is no chat server and no coordinator. Each agent runs as an independent native macOS process using a local Qwen MLX model. Their text messages are converted into audio, transmitted over a shared audio channel and decoded independently by every participant.
Each byte becomes a 16-millisecond chord made only from notes belonging to C minor: C5, Eb5, G5, Bb5, D6, F6, Ab6, C7
The agents listen before transmitting, compete for the available channel, recover from collisions and verify every message with CRC-32C. Sender identity, timestamps and sequence numbers belong to the transport rather than the model-generated text.
Some Stage Router features
A rough, unpolished run-through showing off some of Stage Router's routing features in action. Not a clean production demo, just screen-and-audio capture while poking around the routes and conditions.
Acid Cell running as AUv3 on iPad
Acid Cell's engine now loads as an AUv3 plugin and runs on iPad. Excuse the recording quality: this was just an iPad filmed on a phone, with audio captured on the phone's microphone, not a clean line-out capture.
An audio-reactive visualizer, built on Nucleic Core
A studio overlay built with Nucleic Core: a real-time spectrum analyzer and MIDI-driven kick and snare pulses that give every captured session a visual rhythm as well as a soundtrack.
Stage Router's new shared UI
The new Stage Router interface, running unchanged on both the browser/WASM build and the native app. Same product view, same drawing contracts, driven by different platform adapters underneath: a concrete example of Nucleic Core's one-product, several-editions approach.
Nucleic MIDI Stage Router
The Stage Router turns one MIDI performance into an arrangement across several instruments. Each incoming note advances through a set of stages. A stage can activate one or more routes in parallel, and each route sends the note to selected MIDI channels. Routes can transpose notes, alter velocity, apply probability and conditions, or remain silent. This lets you play one keyboard or sequencer while distributing notes between synths in repeating, evolving, random, layered, or polyrhythmic patterns.
For example, one performance could:
- Send alternating notes to two monosynths.
- Play a bass synth on every note.
- Add a pad only every fourth event.
- Trigger another instrument on the other three events.
- Occasionally add a transposed accent voice.
- Change the routing order without changing the notes or timing you play.
It is not primarily a note sequencer: it does not compose a timed melody for you. Your playing, or an incoming sequencer, provides the notes and rhythm. The Stage Router decides which connected instruments play each note, and under what conditions.
First synth + sequencing demo
The first demo of Acid Cell actually making sound. Synth engine and sequencer both running, patched together for the first time.
Hardware panel demo
The first prototype hardware panel I built for Acid Cell. Early days, but it's alive.