A new open-source project called SoundCraft is trying to rebuild the core of Avid Pro Tools, the professional digital audio workstation long used in music and film post-production, as a clean-room implementation written entirely in Rust. According to its repository on GitHub, listed on 12 October 2026, the application already runs natively on macOS, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, and in the browser. The developers, however, describe the software as pre-alpha, so it is a project to watch rather than a finished replacement.
What SoundCraft offers today
SoundCraft presents itself as a complete digital audio workstation. Its feature list covers multitrack editing, a full mixer with plugins, sends and automation, MIDI sequencing, recording and bouncing, and it can be controlled from the command line or by an AI agent. The GitHub page describes the project as part of the ArtCraft family of creative tools, which the team says are free, open-source and each written from scratch in Rust.
The editing toolkit is broad. According to the repository, it includes several edit modes, a range of selection and trim tools, playlists with comping lanes, clip gain lines and undo for every action. Fades and crossfades are drawn directly from the corners of a clip, a detail that will feel familiar to anyone who has spent time in a professional editing environment.
The mixing and processing side is equally detailed. The repository lists faders with automation, pre and post sends, busses, VCA masters, solo modes and automatic plugin delay compensation. It also bundles a long set of built-in processors, including equalisers, compressors, limiters, reverbs, delays, a subtractive synth and a drum synth, and states that CLAP plugins can be loaded alongside them.
Built for people who already know the workflow
One of the project's stated goals is to make the transition easy for experienced users. The GitHub description says SoundCraft follows the workflow that audio engineers already know, with an Edit window for arranging and a Mix window for balancing. Keyboard shortcuts for edit modes, tools and common actions are documented in the application's settings, and the repository says users can view the full list there.
The software also covers the practical details of a session. It supports a range of audio file formats for import and export, including WAV, AIFF, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis, and it can read the audio from some MP4 and MOV movie files. Bouncing can produce mixes or stems at 16, 24 or 32-bit float, and the report includes peak, true peak and integrated loudness in LUFS, which matters for anyone delivering material to broadcast or streaming standards.
For MIDI work, the repository mentions a piano-roll editor with a velocity lane, a score view, step input, quantise and Standard MIDI File support. It also lists Audio-to-MIDI conversion from a sung or played melody.
Scripting and AI agent control
A distinctive feature is the project's emphasis on automation. According to the GitHub page, every action in the interface is also available as a command with an identifier and JSON parameters. The same commands can be reached from menus, the keyboard, the command line, a JSON control channel and an MCP server. The documentation states that programmatic calls never open dialogue boxes, and a reporting function shows exactly what changed after a command runs, so an agent can check its own work.
The project also includes a session health check. The repository says it can flag missing audio files, sample-rate mismatches and clip source problems across all playlists. It is important to note what that check does not cover: according to the source, it examines loaded media only, not files on disk, signal levels, plugins or routing.
Where the project stands
The developers are candid about the gaps. The repository says SoundCraft covers about 94 per cent of the menu items of the incumbent application, a figure the team says it measured, and roughly 70 per cent of its features by presence. In the project's own estimate, it is about 40 per cent of the way to replacing that software for real work.
Record, edit, mix and bounce are described as working end to end, but several important pieces are still missing. These include choosing an audio interface and buffer size, recording MIDI from a hardware controller, and session interchange through AAF or OMF formats. The team lists these items as the checklist for an alpha release. Translations into other languages are also absent for now.
Installation requirements are straightforward but specific. The repository recommends Rust 1.95 or later for building the desktop and web interface, while the core workspace's declared minimum remains Rust 1.90. Linux users need the ALSA development headers. On Windows, the desktop application initialises only DirectX 12 by default, a choice the developers made to avoid a driver crash on some systems, and users can override the graphics backend for troubleshooting.
Licensing and the outlook
SoundCraft is dual-licensed under the MIT and Apache-2.0 licences, at the user's option. The repository states that the bundled fonts, icons and other assets carry their own open licences, and that all interface icons are drawn in code. It also includes a clear trademark notice: Avid and Pro Tools are trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc., and the project states that it is independent and not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Avid. The ArtCraft name and logos are excluded from the open licence and may only be used unmodified.
For now, SoundCraft is best viewed as an ambitious early-stage project. Its progress will depend on whether the team can close the remaining gaps, especially audio interface support and session interchange, which are essential for professional studios. Readers interested in trying it can download a build from the GitHub releases page, while the developers invite bug reports and feature requests through the project's issue tracker or on Discord.
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