cmdAbl

A command palette for Ableton Live.

Press : while Live is focused to open a keyboard-driven command input with fuzzy filtering, tab completion, and POSIX-style flag arguments. You are invited to add your own extensions as registered commands.

• How it works
• Installation
• Adding your extension to pakabl
• Development
• Scripts
• Project structure

open the manual with help command

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How it works

cmdAbl registers a persistent HTTP server inside the extension host. Karabiner Elements watches for : while Ableton is frontmost and fires a curl request to that server, which opens the command palette modal. Commands are registered in TypeScript and injected into the UI at open time, so the palette always reflects the live command set.

Palette keybindings

Key	Action
Type	Filter commands / flags
Tab	Complete selected item into the input
Enter	Execute selected command
↑ / ↓	Navigate the list
Esc	Close without executing

Command syntax

Commands follow a POSIX-style flag pattern:

commandName [--flag]

Typing a command name followed by a space switches the dropdown into flag-completion mode.

Built-in commands

Command	Description
help	Open the Ableton Live manual in the browser
cmdabl --setup	Install the keyboard trigger rule and show a result dialog
pakabl list	Browse and install community extensions — see Install more extensions with pakabl under Installation

Default modules

cmdAbl ships with a few small built-in modules (src/modules/) that double as examples for your own:

Module	Capability
goto	Surfaces tracks/devices in the palette and selects them via the Remote Script bridge
mute	mute <path>[, <path> …] — toggle mute on one or more tracks by path
solo	solo <path>[, <path> …] — toggle solo on one or more tracks by path
history	Remembers your last 20 invocations and re-offers them as rerunnable entries
pakabl	Install/update/uninstall community extensions — see Install more extensions with pakabl

Live objects

The palette also fuzzy-searches the current Set. Type part of a track name and hit enter to select that track. The track list is snapshotted each time the palette opens.

Note: selecting a track requires the companion cmdAbl Remote Script (the Extensions SDK cannot change Live's selection). See Remote Script bridge under Installation. Without it, the palette still opens and runs commands — only track selection is a no-op.

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Installation

Prerequisites

Platform	Required
macOS	Ableton Live 12 · Karabiner-Elements
Windows	Ableton Live 12 · AutoHotkey v2

Platform note: cmdAbl has only been tested on macOS so far — the Windows paths and setup flow (%APPDATA%\Ableton\Live Extensions, the AutoHotkey trigger, the Remote Script location) are implemented but unverified on a real Windows machine. If you develop on Windows and want to help, trying the install/setup flow and opening an issue with what you find (or a PR with fixes) would be very welcome.

1. Install the extension

Download the latest .ablx file and double-click it — Ableton Live installs and loads the extension automatically.

2. Open the palette

Right-click any clip, track, clip slot, or scene and choose : cmdAbl.

3. Set up the : keyboard shortcut

Run the following command in the palette — it both links the keyboard trigger and copies the companion Remote Script into place for step 4 below:

cmdabl --setup

macOS

Make sure Karabiner-Elements is installed first. A feedback dialog confirms whether the rule was linked or shows an error. Then open Karabiner-Elements → Complex Modifications → Add rule and enable "Open cmdAbl command palette with ':' when Ableton Live is focused".

Keyboard layout note: The rule maps Shift+Period (: on QWERTZ/German layouts). If you use a different layout, edit karabiner/cmdabl.json and change "key_code" to match your key — use Karabiner's Event Viewer to find the correct code.

Windows

Make sure AutoHotkey v2 is installed first. A feedback dialog confirms the script was copied to your startup folder. Open cmdabl.ahk manually to activate it immediately, or restart Windows to auto-start it.

4. Link the Remote Script (enables track selection)

Selecting a track from the palette needs a small companion Remote Script, because Live's Extensions SDK has no API to change the selection itself — cmdabl --setup (step 3) already copied it into Live's User Library for you:

• macOS: ~/Music/Ableton/User Library/Remote Scripts/cmdAbl
• Windows: ~/Documents/Ableton/User Library/Remote Scripts/cmdAbl

Copying the files isn't enough on its own — Live also needs to be told to load and connect to the script, and that's a one-time manual link with no API to automate it:

1. Restart Live so it picks up the new Remote Script (a copy alone doesn't load it).
2. Open Settings → Link, Tempo & MIDI → MIDI, and under Control Surface pick cmdAbl (leave Input/Output set to None). This is the actual "linking" step — it tells Live which Control Surface script to run and connect to the palette's bridge.

Live's log will show cmdAbl bridge listening on 127.0.0.1:27185 once the link is active. Without it, the palette still opens and runs commands — only track selection is a no-op.

5. Install more extensions with pakabl

cmdAbl bundles pakabl, a small package manager for a curated list of community extensions. Run pakabl update once to fetch the index, then browse and manage extensions entirely from the palette:

Command	What it does
pakabl list	Browse the curated list in a UI — Install / Update / Uninstall, or jump to each extension's repo, all with one click
pakabl install <id>	Download and install one extension by id (e.g. federico-pepe.snake)
pakabl update	Refresh the cached curated index
pakabl upgrade <id>@<version>	Re-install a specific version
pakabl uninstall <id>	Remove an installed extension

pakabl list: each entry's button reflects its install status (Install / Update / Uninstall), with a Repo button to jump to its source.

As with any .ablx, restart Live after installing, upgrading, or uninstalling for the change to take effect.

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Adding your extension to pakabl

pakabl's curated list is just a JSON file in this repo, pakabl/index.json, fetched by pakabl update and read by pakabl list/install/upgrade. To get your own extension listed, open a pull request adding an entry:

{
  "id": "your-author-slug.your-extension-slug",
  "name": "Your Extension",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "url": "https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/releases/download/v1.0.0/<file>.ablx"
}

Field	Meaning
id	Must match the folder name Live creates when it installs your .ablx — <author-slug>.<name-slug>, i.e. your manifest.json's author and name fields, lowercased with spaces replaced by hyphens (e.g. author "Marvin Hauke" + name "cmdabl" → marvinhauke.cmdabl). pakabl install/upgrade use this id both to look your entry up and to detect/compare an existing install — a mismatch means version checks silently fail. Double-check against the actual installed folder name on disk, not just a guess from the pattern (one curated entry has author "Federico" rather than "Federico Pepe", producing federico.doom instead of the expected federico-pepe.doom).
name	Free-form display name shown in pakabl list and feedback messages — usually your manifest.json's name.
version	The exact version string from your manifest.json. pakabl install compares this against an existing install to report "already installed" vs. "update available", and upgrade/update (via pakabl list's "Update" button) re-validate against it before downloading — keep it in sync with each release.
url	A direct, stable download link to the .ablx for that version — either a GitHub Release asset (.../releases/download/<tag>/<file>.ablx) or a raw repo file (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<owner>/<repo>/<branch>/<path>/<file>.ablx). Both are fetched identically with a plain HTTP GET; pakabl list's "Repo" button also derives your project's GitHub page from this URL, so it must point at a github.com or raw.githubusercontent.com path that starts with <owner>/<repo>/….

Bump version (and add a new url) in the same PR whenever you cut a new release — pakabl update only ever overwrites its cache with whatever the index currently says, so an out-of-date entry means users get stuck on an old version or a version-mismatch nudge toward upgrade.

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Development

1. Install dependencies

npm install

2. Run the extension in dev mode

npm start

This type-checks, bundles, and loads the extension into Ableton's Extension Host with live reload.

3. Add commands

All commands are registered on the CommandRegistry instance in src/extension.ts:

registry.register("mycommand", "description shown in the palette", (flags) => {
  // flags is string[] of everything typed after the command name
});

// with declared flags for tab-completion:
registry.register(
  "mycommand",
  "description",
  [{ name: "--option", description: "what this flag does" }],
  (flags) => {
    if (flags.includes("--option")) {
      /* ... */
    }
  },
);

Extensions must export an activate(context: ActivationContext) function.

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Scripts

npm start          # type-check, build (dev), and run in Live's Extension Host
npm run package    # production build + create a .ablx archive (includes karabiner/ and windows/)

A GitHub Actions workflow runs npm run package on every push to main and publishes the resulting .ablx as a GitHub Release whenever package.json's version hasn't been released yet — bump the version to cut a release.

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Project structure

src/
  extension.ts       main entry point — registers commands, starts HTTP server
  commandRegistry.ts typed command registry with flag support
  httpTrigger.ts     localhost HTTP server for external triggers (Karabiner, AHK, etc.)
  setup.ts           platform-specific keyboard trigger setup (macOS + Windows)
ui/
  interface.html     command palette (self-contained HTML/CSS/JS, inlined at build time)
karabiner/
  cmdabl.json        Karabiner Elements complex modification (macOS)
windows/
  cmdabl.ahk         AutoHotkey v2 script (Windows)
assets/
  images/            screenshots and videos for this README