Klotho

Klotho, from the Ancient Greek κλώθω (klṓthō), meaning "to spin." The mythological figure Clotho, one of the three Fates, takes her name from this same word.

Klotho is an open source computer-assisted composition toolkit implemented in Python. It is designed to work in tandem with external synthesis applications and as a resource for the methods and models associated with musical abstraction and computation.

Klotho adapts to multiple Python workflows, supporting traditional scripting, interactive notebook environments, and immediate computational tasks through the interpreter.

Companion Book

An interactive Jupyter Book exploring the theory, mathematics, and CAC practice behind Klotho. This is a work in progress, but will ultimately cover such topics as foundational graph structures, formal grammars, evolutionary algorithms, quantum fields, and beyond.

Readable directly in your browser with no installation required.

Read online: https://kr4g.github.io/klotho-book/

Installation

Option 1: Install from PyPI (Recommended)

pip install klotho-cac

That's it. You're ready to go.

Option 2: Install from Source

Clone the repository to get a local copy of the Klotho source code, then install in editable mode:

git clone https://github.com/kr4g/Klotho.git
cd Klotho/
pip install -e .

Editable mode (-e) means changes you make to the source are immediately reflected without reinstalling.

For contributors: To also install testing and documentation tools, run pip install -e .[dev] instead.

Integration with SuperCollider

To use Klotho with SuperCollider, see the Klotho-SC extension package: https://github.com/kr4g/Klotho-SC.git.

Documentation

📖 Online Documentation: https://klotho.readthedocs.io/

The complete documentation is available online and includes:

• Complete API reference for all modules
• Usage examples and tutorials
• NumPy-style docstring documentation

🛠️ Build Documentation Locally (Optional):

For developers who want to build the documentation locally or preview changes:

pip install klotho-cac[docs]
cd docs
make dev

License

Klotho © 2023–2026 by Ryan Millett is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.