Hackdaw — a tiny AI-native DAW

Logic Pro was too much program for a first song on a one-week deadline. But that was only half the problem: it was a black box to the agents helping me make Shape of AI.

A normal DAW turns a song into a thousand tiny clicks. An agent can help with lyrics, mixing ideas, and render commands, but it cannot read the timeline and make a concrete edit like: move the second chorus two seconds later, lower the ad-libs, mute the reference tracks.

So I built Hackdaw: a tiny browser DAW whose whole project is one readable timeline.json file.

I drag, split, trim, and listen in the browser. Those are the taste calls. The agent reads and changes the exact same timeline as text. Save in the browser, ask the agent, reload. One project, two editors.

The file can be versioned, diffed, generated, and rewritten without a binary project format or lock-in. It is non-destructive: raw media stays untouched. The browser preview follows the same layering rules as the Python and ffmpeg render pipeline, so what I see is what gets rendered.

Hackdaw was not a startup idea. I needed it to finish the first song I ever released: vocals, mix, and music video, made with my own voice and AI agents in the same week. That is why I think it points somewhere real. AI-native creative software should not erase the human. It should make the mechanical part legible enough for an agent to help, while the person keeps the taste.