The patch builds itself while you describe it.
Name the machines, the trusses, the universes — the patch fills up with GDTF profiles, addresses, footprints. You read the table, not the manual.
The lighting console you program by talking.
Tell it what the song needs: it patches the rig, builds the presets, writes the cues and the effects, and you check every change on the cue sheet. Nothing hits the stage until you press GO.
sACN E1.31 · Art-Net · GDTF · MVR · NDI · SMPTE LTC
You talk. It programs. You verify.
The conversation is the command line. Every request becomes real programming — presets, cuelists, effects — and every reply is a verifiable change on the cue sheet. Never a mystery, never a black box.
Operator
Chorus: white strobe bump on the back trusses, and keep the amber floor from the verse.
DORAH AI
Done — ✓ store cue 7 «CHORUS» --fade 0.5 — strobe bump
on 46 spots, amber floor held. It's in blind: review it, then GO.
Three real exchanges on a loop: the ✓ lines are the exact feedback DORAH prints — everything lands in blind until your GO.
Five minutes in.
What actually changes at the desk, from the first soundcheck on.
Cues you can audit, not just trust.
Every cue the AI writes lands on the tracking sheet — fixtures as rows, presets and values in the open. You spot a mistake before the audience does.
Effects in BPM, not in code.
Ask for a slow amber wave at 60 BPM and it runs. Shape, rate and size stay on sliders you can grab — stored, it rides the cues.
GO stays a human finger.
The AI writes everything, arms nothing. The stage changes only on your GO — and the emergency keys are one gesture away, with confirm.
Six hubs. One desk.
Work is grouped the way a show is run. Every screenshot below is the real stadium showfile — 388 fixtures · 70 universes · summer 2026. Click any image to open it full size.
▶ Show — playback, time, the song
Cuelists, the tracking sheet, the setlist on timecode, audio bumps: everything that runs the night.
◧ Prog — groups, presets, tools
The pools you select from and store into — filled by the AI, laid out like keycaps.
∿ FX — motion, video, space, colour
Four BPM engines, a per-cuelist fader bank, pixel mapping from the real layout.
⌗ Rig — patch and layout
GDTF fixtures and the MVR geometry the whole desk trusts.
◎ Guard — the venue tier, off by default
Fixed Look, look pool, house, emergency, guest input and the ops Desk: cold on a normal event until you open them.
⚙ Sys — network, setup, AI
Session and backup, machine settings, keyboard and MIDI maps, autonomous pipelines.
The AI programs.
Only you arm.
Every irreversible gesture is two-step: first press arms (yellow), second fires. The AI writes in blind and can never arm the stage by itself.
Rack banners always name the state — Blind, Solo, Fixed Look, guest — and ⟲ Oops undoes the last fifty gestures, human and AI, to any point.
Try it. This one is safe here.
Battle-tested where it counts: one stadium stage, 388 fixtures, 70 universes, zero incidents. byte-level output · full show, live audience · summer 2026
The numbers, for those who want them
Production output engine · packets counted at the receiver · 100% reception verified · Mac mini M4 (10-core), Node 24. Live show vs synthetic limit, kept apart on purpose. This bench lives on the Network page — the same numbers FOH watches.
NETWORK ▸ BENCH REALTIME · same numbers FOH watches
| Rig | Universes | Cost per 25 ms tick | Reception | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stadium show — live · 388 fixtures | 70 | 5.7 ms med · 7.4 P95 · 23% | full show, zero incidents | — |
| 1,000 heads × 50 ch bench | 100 | 0.85 ms · 3.4% | 100% · 40.2 Hz | 21 Mbit/s |
| 1,000 heads × 100 ch bench | 200 | 1.32 ms · 5.3% | 100% · 40.3 Hz | 41 Mbit/s |
| 4,000 fixtures × 40 ch bench | 334 | 2.74 ms · 11.0% | 100% · 40.2 Hz | 69 Mbit/s |
| Output engine alone 8 workers | 4,000 | 0.70 ms · 2.8% | 640k / 640k packets | 819 Mbit/s |
Full pipeline rows: merge + 2 FX on every fixture + resolver + real sACN. Green row = the live show. scripts/bench-network.js · M4 · 2026-07-24. Ceiling ~7,700 uni/tick single-thread; past gigabit → 10GbE or session shard.
- The tick 25 ms
- Rebuild every universe 40×/s through the layer stack. Template packer ~0.12 µs per universe; optional parallel workers when the count grows.
- The wire
- sACN E1.31 (identity, priority, sequence, clean end-of-stream) and Art-Net with compliant ArtPoll/ArtPollReply. No ghost sources.
- The backup
- DORAH-Net: stations elect master/backup; backup seizes output mid-song by sACN priority. Universes can shard across stations.
How the signal is built
Forty times a second the console rebuilds the whole universe set from layers. Bottom layers are creative (playback, programmer, effects). Top layers are venue and safety. Whoever is higher wins on those fixtures.
One tick · every 25 ms · bottom → top
- 1PlaybackActive cuelists and executors — the show as stored.
- 2Programmer + FX + Pixel + Solo/HLWhat you are writing live, effects, video map. Skipped in blind.
- 3Guest sACN if armedForeign desk input, only on allowed universes. Never paints Fixed Look fixtures.
- 4Facility House / EcoService looks for walk-in. Yield to Fixed Look when the field is locked.
- 5Fixed Look if ONBaked absolute values overwrite the creative stack on the locked scope. Untouchable until unlock.
- 6Safety panic / freeze / evacHard modes. By default they do not black fixtures inside Fixed Look (protect the field).
- 7Resolve → sACN / Art-NetGrand Master, pack every universe, send at 40 Hz with identity, priority, sequence.
Wire: sACN E1.31 or Art-Net · template packer ~0.12 µs/universe · keep-alive while sources live
Normal event · Fixed Look off
Creative layers write freely. AI stores in blind. Nothing leaves the programmer onto the stage until you GO or arm. Guest and House stay off unless you turn them on. Same desk for a club night or a tour.
Venue · Fixed Look on
You bake a full look (dimmer, position, colour…). While locked, that look wins after everything creative. Unlock restores the live show underneath — no blackout, no forced re-GO. CLI: secure on/off.
Why this order
If Fixed Look sat under FX, an effect could still move a “locked” head. By applying it after guest and facility, the certified look is the last creative word before hard safety — and safety still cannot silently kill the field unless you configure override.
What is not magic
No black box between cue and cable: merge → layers → resolve → UDP. The Network page shows the same tick numbers FOH watches. Backup stations can seize output by sACN priority mid-song.
- Bake, not live-ref
- Fixed Look freezes absolute channel values (0…1) at lock time. Changing a preset under the desk does not move a locked fixture — you would have to unlock, edit, bake again.
- Blind ≠ Fixed Look ≠ panic
- Blind hides programmer/FX from the stage while you work. Fixed Look holds a certified look on. Panic is hard safety — and by default respects the lock.
- AI bounds
- The AI may program looks and even help prepare a bake path, but by default it cannot toggle Fixed Look or emergency. Arming the field stays human.
Be there when the desk lights up.
Private beta ahead, on macOS with Apple Silicon. One email — who you are and what you light — and you're on the list.
Join the waitlist
private beta 2026 · macOS · Apple Silicon