ableton-live-stubs

ableton-live-stubs

PEP 561 type stubs for Ableton Live 12.3.6's Python API (Live.* modules).

These stubs are for developers building MIDI Remote Scripts (Control Surfaces) that run inside Ableton Live's embedded Python runtime. They provide type information for the Live module that Live exposes to scripts at runtime but is not available for static analysis outside of Live.

Installation

pip install ableton-live-stubs

Usage

Once installed, type checkers (pyright, mypy) automatically discover the Live module stubs. No configuration needed.

Import types under TYPE_CHECKING to avoid runtime import errors (the Live module only exists inside Ableton Live's Python runtime):

from __future__ import annotations
from typing import TYPE_CHECKING

if TYPE_CHECKING:
    import Live
    from Live.Song import Song

def on_tempo_changed(song: Song) -> None:
    app: Live.Application.Application = Live.Application.get_application()
    print(f"Live {app.get_major_version()}: tempo is now {song.tempo}")

Manual setup (without pip)

Download the zip from the GitHub release and add the extracted directory (the parent of Live/) to your type checker's stub path:

// pyrightconfig.json
{
  "stubPath": "path/to/Live-stubs"
}

Version matching

Each release of ableton-live-stubs corresponds to a specific Ableton Live version. Install the version that matches your target Live version — the API surface changes between releases.

Documentation

For detailed API documentation — including property restrictions (e.g. which track/clip types support a given property), valid input ranges, and observable properties — see the LiveAPI reference.

The stubs are best-effort and have known limitations: types are conservative (args without a pinned-down type stay as object), names are decorative (PEP 570 positional-only markers prevent kwarg calls), and docstrings come verbatim from Live's runtime Boost.Python __doc__ strings. See Limitations & caveats in the repo README for the full posture and the current list of known weak spots.

Source

Generated from runtime introspection of Ableton Live 12.3.6. See LiveAPI for details.