doricomcp

Talk to your Dorico score. doricomcp connects Claude to a live Dorico 6 project, so you can ask about the music and have it edited for you:

• "What is in bars 12-20 of the violas?"
• "Add a crescendo from bar 40 beat 2 to the downbeat of 42 in all strings."
• "Put pizz. on the cellos in bar 33 and arco in bar 37."
• "Double the violin line an octave lower in the violas."
• "Check the voice leading in bars 20-28 against this chord plan."

Every edit appears in Dorico as one ordinary undo step, and it is read back and checked; if the check fails, the edit is undone at once. doricomcp uses only Dorico's own interfaces (Remote Control and its built-in Lua scripting): it does not modify Dorico or your files.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Steinberg. Dorico is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. Status: alpha, tested on Dorico 6.2.30 on macOS. Save your work before a session.

Install

You need a Mac with Dorico 6.2 or later and Claude Desktop or Claude Code.

1. Turn on Remote Control in Dorico. In Dorico's Preferences, enable Remote Control and keep the port at 4560.
2. Add doricomcp to Claude, one of:

   • Claude Desktop: download doricomcp.mcpb from the latest release and double-click it, then click Install. Claude sets up Python by itself.

   • Claude Code: install uv, then run claude mcp add doricomcp -- uvx doricomcp.

   • Any other MCP client: install uv and add this server to the client's configuration:

     {
       "mcpServers": {
         "doricomcp": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["doricomcp"] }
       }
     }
     

     If the client cannot find uvx, use its full path (which uvx in Terminal; usually /opt/homebrew/bin/uvx or ~/.local/bin/uvx).

3. Open a score in Dorico and ask Claude something about it. The first time, Dorico asks whether to allow the client doricomcp: click Allow. You will not be asked again.
4. Optional: to let Claude look at the score (screenshot) and answer Dorico's dialogs, allow Screen Recording and Accessibility for Claude in System Settings > Privacy & Security. Both need the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install).

Troubleshooting

• "Dorico is not reachable": Dorico is not running, or Remote Control is off or on another port.
• Dorico never shows the approval prompt: delete ~/.doricomcp/session_token and ask again.
• Some tools are switched off in Claude Desktop: Claude Desktop remembers switched-off tools per server name; switch them on in the server's settings.
• Anything else: open an issue with what you asked and what happened.

How to talk about the music

Claude handles these details for you; they matter when you read the tool results.

• Positions are a bar (1-based) and a beat, counted in crotchets from the start of the bar (0, 1, 3/2), or a position in crotchets from the start of the flow.
• Voices are numbered per score (piano: 2 = right hand, 4 = left hand); get_score_overview lists them with their instrument, staff and voice.
• Notes are written like "Eb4+G4+C5:h. G4:e Eb5:q. C5:s r:q": C4 is middle C, durations are note values w h q e s t with dots, or crotchets (3/2).
• Quarter-tones (in a score whose tonality system is 24-EDO, set in Dorico's Key Signatures panel) are spelled as Dorico spells them: the alteration as a fraction of an octave between the letter and the octave. A1/244 is A4 a quarter-tone sharp, C-1/245 is C5 a quarter-tone flat, D1/85 is D5 three quarter-tones sharp (3/24 = 1/8).
• Dynamics, tempo, time signatures, clefs, ornaments and holds take the same text as Dorico's popovers (p<f, pp<ff>pp, rit., [2+2+3]/8). The popover guide lists every entry and what Dorico 6.2 actually creates for the undocumented ones.
• Playing techniques are given by name (pizz., con sord.), including ones you added to the score yourself.

What it can do

"Confirmed live" means the test harness ran the tool on a real Dorico and read the result back.

Session & introspection

Read

Write: notes

Write: markings

Write: options & structure

Navigation, playback, history

Known gaps and how they could be closed

What follows is what Dorico's interfaces do not give yet, measured on 6.2.30, with the most promising way in. Each one is a good first contribution.

• Lyrics (read_markings, no write tool). Lyric text is not readable and NoteInput.StartLyricInput plus AcceptCurrentLyricInput?LyricText= from a script created no lyric. Next: send the same two commands from Remote Control (not Lua) with the note selected, and try the EventCreationLocation parameter; then read the lyric back with the selection read used for tempo.
• Tempo beat unit (read_markings, read_context_at). Text, bpm, relative and final percentages are read by selecting the tempo marking, but the beat unit is never exposed, so h.=60 and q=60 both read 60. Next: record the definition when set_tempo writes it (as add_voice records staves), and compare against Dorico's playback tempo for markings made by hand.
• fp and sffz (read_markings). sfz, sf, rfz, rf, fz and mfz are read from the dynamic's force type; fp leaves no readable property and sffz reads as sfz. Next: extend the sealed-value equality probe that reads p/f levels to Dorico-built fp and sffz candidates.
• Note details in voices with techniques, trills, ornaments, arpeggios or glissandi (read_music). Lua cannot list events in such a voice, so pitches and rhythms come from the stream dump, but articulations and ties do not. Measured route: in one script, delete the voice's technique, trill or ornament events, read the notes with all their properties, then undo at once; the voice dump came back identical. For a single note, Remote Control's status message carries the selected note's articulation flags (articulationStaccato, ...).
• div. and unis. (add_text). They are written as staff text; Dorico's real divisi is Edit.AddDivisi / Edit.RestoreUnison, which open the Change Divisi dialog. Next: drive that dialog with the existing dialog tools, as delete_flow does with its confirmation.
• Tonality system (24-EDO and others). Quarter-tones are read and written, but switching a score to 24-EDO is only in Dorico's Key Signatures panel: the keys popover rejects a tonality system in its text, and CreateKeySignature ignores a tonalitySystemID parameter. Next: look for the panel's command in Remote Control's command list after choosing a system there by hand.
• Deleting players (remove_instrument removes instruments). Project.Players.Delete needs a player selected in Setup mode, and Project.Players.DeleteEmpty opens a dialog listing every player without music, not just one. Next: select the one player in that dialog with dialog_set before pressing Delete Selected Players.
• Copy and move with markings (copy_range). Lua's copyRange is a no-op, so notes and rests are re-created and markings are not copied. Next: re-create slurs, dynamics and articulations from the twin, as add_notes(replace=True) already does for slurs.
• Key tonic and mode (get_bar_map). Only the signature (e.g. 2 sharps) is recoverable. Next: infer major/minor from the music with check_voice_leading's chord logic and present it as a guess.
• Title and composer (get_score_overview). Not in Lua or Remote Control. No route known through Dorico's own interfaces.
• Staff of a voice (get_score_overview). Dorico does not say which staff a voice is on; the server knows the first voice per staff and the voices it created, and says "unknown" otherwise.
• Redo after a read (redo). Any script, even a read, clears Dorico's redo stack, so redo works only directly after undo.

How writes stay safe

• Every write is one Lua transaction, which Dorico records as one undo step.
• The tool reads the affected range back and checks the expected result; on a mismatch it undoes the step immediately and confirms the range is restored.
• A script is never abandoned: Dorico runs Remote Control commands in between a script's own commands, so a read or undo sent while a script still runs would land in the middle of it. The bridge waits for the script's done marker however long it takes; it stops early only for a modal dialog, and then nothing is undone.
• A tool call the client cancels still runs to the end under the session lock (verified, or undone on failure), and the next tool result reports how it ended.
• Commands that act on "the selection" always get a real selection first (an event at the position, or a temporary rest deleted in the same step), because a selection-less popover command can open a modal dialog that blocks Dorico.
• Reading a tempo selects it, and Dorico records every selection as an undo step; the server counts the selection steps its reads leave on top and undo skips them.

Contributing

Bug reports, measurements on other Dorico versions and pull requests are welcome. CONTRIBUTING.md explains the layout, the checks and how to run the live test harness. What Dorico does and does not allow through its interfaces is recorded in docs/dorico-behaviour.md.

Roadmap

• Close the gaps listed above, starting with lyrics and note details in technique voices.
• Windows support: the Remote Control and Lua parts are portable; screenshots and dialogs need a Windows counterpart of windows.py.
• Milestone: a project website on GitHub Pages with setup, a demo video and the tool reference.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.