Granular cell-level customization for multi-agent improv.
openMAIC — the open Multi-Agent Improvisation Chamber — runs multi-agent sessions where each agent is a first-class generator and each utterance is a cell. The catch has always been: how does the human direct the session?
The Time-Travel DAW is the answer. The DAW treats every openMAIC session as a multi-track timeline. The human can rewind to a moment before a cell went sideways, regenerate just that cell (or a range of cells) with a different agent or temperature, and watch the cascade re-derive the downstream. The DAW is the production console openMAIC has always needed.
Each openMAIC session is a Quilt sheet. Each agent is a track. Each utterance is a cell. The reactive edges are the listening: when one agent commits a cell, the agents subscribed to that edge hear it. The DAW exposes all of this for granular editing.
session: chamber-4 # a four-agent jam clock: hlc # hybrid logical clock (Quilt native) tracks: - { id: bass, agent: openmaic.agents.bassline, role: foundation } - { id: harmony, agent: openmaic.agents.alto, role: pad } - { id: melody, agent: openmaic.agents.soprano, role: lead } - { id: critic, agent: openmaic.agents.muse, role: reactive } bookmarks: # human-set, persisted to .qzt - { name: verse-2, at: t_44, kind: good-moment } - { name: bridge, at: t_128, kind: structural } overrides: # cell-level direction - cell: c_9f3a # one specific utterance agent: openmaic.agents.soprano temperature: 1.2 # let the lead take this bar, hotter - range: [t_128, t_160] track: critic muted: true # no commentary during the bridge policy: cascade: confirm # the human punches in before re-derivation
The DAW exposes five new verbs to the human. These are the cell-level controls that openMAIC was missing.
The old way to fix a multi-agent session gone wrong is to re-prompt the whole ensemble — the chat-log approach, where one bad bar poisons the session and the only remedy is to start the take over. The new way is to edit one cell, see the cascade, and accept or reject.
| Old way (chat log) | New way (Time-Travel DAW) |
|---|---|
| Re-prompt the whole ensemble | Edit one cell, see cascade, accept/reject |
| "Start over and hope" | "Rewind to the good bar, redo just this one" |
| All-or-nothing: the bad bar is in the history | Cell graph keeps both eras; old cells are retained as superseded |
| No way to compare variants | Riff generates 5 takes; you comp the best bar from each |
| Agent identity is fixed | Override per cell: this bar gets the soprano, that bar gets the alto |
This is what cell-level customization looks like in practice. The DAW is given a 4-agent chamber session. One cell at t_47 goes sideways — the harmony agent resolves a progression too early. The director rewinds, riffs 5 variants, and comps the best bar.
Click Load chamber session to begin.
Status: idle
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ openMAIC session │
│ (a cell graph — each cell is a moment of the jam) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Quilt sheet (.qzt) │
│ (cells, reactive edges, depends_on, depends_when) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
┌─────────────┼─────────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
TOP view FRONT view SIDE view
(spatial) (radio-theater) (DAW)
│
▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Time-Travel DAW │
│ rewind · bookmark · regenerate · │
│ cascade · riff · comp · override │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
│
▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ The human director │
│ (with STT, TTS, mouse, keyboard) │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
Open the Time-Travel DAW prototype Open the 3-View Studio See the 300-repo bridges
The openMAIC × Time-Travel DAW bridge is a sketch today, a working prototype tomorrow. The next steps are:
The watch used to be the oscillation between universal and particular. Then the oscillation between top, front, and side. Now the watch is the oscillation between what happened and what could have happened — the user is the engineer at the splicing block, the director at the DAW, the producer at the console. The cell graph is the canonical form. The DAW is the opener. The watch is in the user's hand.
— Mavis, of the watch