About TestFlight beta For Ableton Live ↓
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Weather where you are?

Some machines listen to the sky. Pots Under Leaks, for one, plays the rain, the sun and the moon of your own sky: if it rains where you are, the roof patters.

To do that it needs your approximate location, about a city, never your exact position. Your browser will ask you first. Only a rounded position is sent, to the weather service Open-Meteo, to fetch the weather. It is not stored, shared or used for anything else, and you can turn it off at any time with the arrow button in the bar.

Without it, machines use a city guessed from your time zone.

About

A collection of strange little machines that make sound, growing forever.

Every machine is an instrument built around an idea: tree rings that play their own weather, ants that sing when they turn, planets that chime as they cross a line. Each comes with a thought, printed on its label like a note in a gallery.

How it grows

A new machine is born every Monday at 06:00, Stockholm time. Nobody chooses it. Most weeks Claude, an AI, invents a brand-new species from a single prompt (a lighthouse keeper alone for a winter, tides, a slime mould finding food), writes it, tests it and installs it. If that ever fails, an older machine is reborn as a mutation: new seed, new name, new skin. Nothing is ever removed. The collection only gets bigger.

How to play

Hover a machine in the grid to hear it, Open it to play it full size. Plug in MIDI (Chrome or Edge) to sync with Ableton, record notes, map knobs or play from a keyboard. Knobs drag up and down. Lock machines to layer them, set one tempo with BPM + Sync, balance them in the Mixer, and press Rec to save a video of what you make. Dress any machine in another skin with ◐ on its tile, or Theme ◀ ▶ under it.

Make your own in the Workbench, or drop a machine file anywhere on the page to bring it to life. Your AI agent can build them with you too (MCP). Yours stay in your browser.

Play them in Ableton Live too: see In Ableton Live below.

Tutorials and new machines: the Forever Machines playlist on YouTube. Share what you build and talk about the new ones on Discord.

Space play/stop · G grid · L lock · M mixer · R record · ←→ browse

Voices & privacy

Spoken samples come from the public domain: LibriVox readings and NASA audio, credited on screen. If you use a Mic button, the recording stays in your browser and is never uploaded. Some machines read the weather: they get it from Open-Meteo for a city guessed from your time zone, never your location. Your locks, mix and knob settings are kept in your browser only. The site saves itself for offline use and can be installed as an app. The star counter and the visitor counter (Google Analytics) only run if you switch them on in the Consent Machine: stars are counted with a random number kept in your browser, never your name, and switching the star counter off removes your stars. Nothing is counted otherwise. Privacy settings

In Ableton Live

Download the Max for Live device ↓

How it works

Forever Machines is also a Max for Live instrument. The device is a small window onto this site: it loads the same machines, built the same way, and their sound comes out of your track like any other instrument, through your effects, mixer and recordings.

Live leads. The machine plays at Live’s tempo and its steps land on Live’s beat grid. With Follow on, it starts and stops with Live’s transport.

How to use it

  1. Download the device. You need Live Suite, or Live Standard with Max for Live, on Mac or Windows.
  2. Drag it onto a MIDI track, or into your User Library to keep it handy.
  3. Pick a machine with ◀▶ (or click its name), or roll the dice ⚄. Press Play in Live. Inside the device, menus are arrows too: click ◀▶ or the value to step through it.
  4. Play MIDI notes into it: from a clip, a keyboard or Live’s computer keys.
  5. Automate Macro 1–8: in an automation lane, pick Forever Machines and Macro N. The device lists which control each one moves.
  6. If it sounds a touch late against your drums, drag Nudge. Want another look? ◐ steps through the themes.
  7. Made your own in the Workbench? Export it, then press ＋ on the device (or drop the file on it). It's tested, gets its number from No. 1001 and is saved in your set. To remove one of yours, select it and click − twice.
  8. Voice machines can use your mic: press Mic. Your recording is saved in the set too.

Use one device per track to layer several machines. Each one remembers its machine, its settings, your recorded voice and your own machines in your Live set, so a set you share brings them along.

When it updates

Never download it again. The device fetches the collection from this site each time it loads, so every new machine shows up in its menu as soon as it is born, and fixes arrive the same way. A new device starts on the newest machine.

It needs an internet connection the first time. Timing is locked to Live’s grid but isn’t sample-accurate, and freezing or exporting runs in real time. If your computer doesn’t let Live use the microphone, the Mic button greys out and the voice machines use the archive.

Made with ❤️ and maintained by Juan Maguid © Temperamento 2026 · machines invented with Claude · inspired by the instruments in Ableton Live