Muse — Phase 1

A personal songwriting companion. Send a feeling to the #muse Discord channel and Muse replies with an interesting chord progression — each chord spelled out, a one-line “why it feels that way”, and a piano audio clip.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20.6+ (22 recommended)
• FluidSynth + a free piano soundfont: bash brew install fluidsynth # download a soundfont, e.g. FluidR3_GM.sf2 (MIT) or a Salamander SF2, # and point MUSE_SOUNDFONT_PATH at it
• A Discord bot application (Muse’s own), with the MESSAGE CONTENT privileged intent enabled, invited to your server. Add a #muse channel and copy its ID.

Setup

cd muse
npm install
cp .env.example .env   # fill in DISCORD_TOKEN, DISCORD_CHANNEL_ID, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, MUSE_SOUNDFONT_PATH
npm test               # run the unit tests
npm start              # start the bot (keep it running on the always-on Mac)

How it works

handleIntent runs the pipeline: Brain (Claude → Roman numerals + chord symbols + explanation) → Theory (tonal spells each chord) → Card (text) → MIDI (midi-writer-js) → Render (FluidSynth → WAV) → Library (SQLite). Every fragment and progression is saved to muse.db.