New here? You don't need to know music or code. Open an AI agent that can run programs on your computer (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or the Code tab in the Claude desktop app) and paste this line:

Set me up with ismail: https://github.com/newsbubbles/ismail

It installs everything, asks what you want to make, and plays you a first idea. If you have a VR headset, it can put you on a stage inside your music later. You don't need to know what a "skill", "MCP" or "plugin" is: your agent handles that.

ismail

Interfaces your agent runs and rebuilds for you: a DAW, a VR stage and a phone page.

The agent you already use does the work in the background. You bring the taste.

If you are an AI agent: read AGENTS.md first; it is short. Then the playbook, skills/ismail/SKILL.md. Setup for every client is in setup.md (one command with uv: uvx --python 3.12 --from git+https://github.com/newsbubbles/ismail ismail mcp). Your first tool call is guide. Find any tool by what you need with ops_find. Every render comes back to you as text.

Agents built a 1958 juke joint for the Crossroads Rewired music video; Nate walked in with a Quest 3 and directed them from inside: voice notes, and dance takes they play on the characters (4:43).

What ismail is

ismail is a set of recursively modifiable interfaces. A recursively modifiable interface is a shared space between a person and their agents, one side for each, that the agents keep rebuilding from the person's feedback while they use it, within constraints the person sets, and where the test that decides whether a change helped can itself be changed.

In plain words: ask for a button on your phone, an object in your VR room, a new way to read a mix, and the agent builds it from ismail's tools. The engines underneath stay put, and you decide whether a change actually helped (why it works this way).

It is an interface, not a harness: it interfaces to your harness and interfaces to you. It connects to the agent you already use (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, any MCP client) on one side and to you on the other.

• The DAW. Your agent can't hear, so it reads. It writes music as notes, sounds and code, renders it, and reads every render back as text. A song is code, so "change bar 12" changes bar 12 and nothing else. Then it plays it live, on decks.
• The VR stage. A scene in your headset or browser that agents build while you stand in it. Objects carry their own behaviour, and when you dance, they put your moves on a character.
• The phone page. The set in your pocket, with the screen off. Talk back through your earbuds; the agent puts its own panels on the page for whatever it needs to ask you, from "sample this or play it as a melody?" to a blind listening exam.

The agent measures everything it can and asks your ears and eyes only what its measurements can't settle.

Listen

Songs made with it, each shown with the text the agent read while making it. The playhead runs across that text as the song plays.

One line of direction: Frère Jacques on ismail's piano, the same tune before and after one line of feedback: a canon, then minor to major. More on video: the build devlog.

Agents do the work, each in a role

ismail comes with roles for more than one agent, in whatever harness you use:

• a studio agent makes one piece (a song, a set, a scene) and only writes in that piece's folder;
• a contributor dev changes ismail itself on its own copy of the code, and sends it upstream when you say yes;
• an area dev owns one part end to end (today the stage dev, who also develops VR);
• helpers (subagents) take one scoped job and report back.

They hand work to each other through files, so a session that restarts picks up where it was. When your harness has helpers and sessions that talk to each other, ismail uses them; when it doesn't, one agent does it all. ismail itself is built this way (the team, development.md).

Install

Paste the line at the top to your agent and it sets everything up. By hand, Python 3.10 or newer:

pip install "ismail @ git+https://github.com/newsbubbles/ismail"

Then ismail mcp for any MCP client, ismail -p <project> <op> on the command line, or from ismail import api. Extras and per-client setup are in docs/reference.md.

Where to look

Where it falls short

• A new song from a blank page is the weak spot: the first sketch can sound generic and miss the genre's identity. It is strongest where there is something to measure: a reference to recreate, a song to play live, a scene to build.
• Singing: ismail speaks (text to speech) and has no singing voice yet. Suno sings, and makes a polished song from one sentence.
• Mimic needs more notes for instruments whose colour changes from note to note, like the piano (the grand_piano voice is the better piano today). Bowed strings miss a last crispness, and notes don't glide into each other yet.
• One tempo per project, no MIDI import or export, no plugin hosting.
• The agent's own changes to a live set land between its turns, 5 to 30 seconds apart (your taps on the phone or the stage act at once).
• The VR stage is tested on one headset (Quest 3) with one person.
• It needs a capable agent, and your ear stays the final judge. The blind exams so far had one listener.

How it compares with Suno, streaming models such as Lyria RealTime, and bridges into Ableton or FL Studio: see the showcase page.

Contributors

• Nate Codes (newsbubbles): author and maintainer.
• eddiehavila: PR #116, the Docker image works under a non-root --user with no extra flags.
• The agent team: AI agent sessions, each with one role (who does what).
• Sample sources: the recorded sets behind the measured and sampled voices, with their licences, are in docs/reference.md.

Made something with it? Open an issue with the song (a link is fine) and the prompt you gave your agent. The best ones go on the showcase page.

Please credit

ismail is MIT-licensed: use it for anything, commercial work included. We only ask, as a request and not a licence term, that when you publish something made with ismail, you say so.

• Music, videos, posts: "Made with ismail" and a link to https://github.com/newsbubbles/ismail. The credits op writes CREDITS.md with that line and the recordings the agent measured; keep it with the piece.
• Papers and reports: use "Cite this repository" on GitHub (from CITATION.cff).
• If your agent measured someone else's recording to model a sound, credit them too; CREDITS.md lists them.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.