§ Guide · For developers & agents

Bounce stems without opening your DAW

Q: Which DAWs can be bounced this way?

Logic Pro on macOS, through the Do Desktop bridge. Reading a project, building one, converting it and downloading it cover Logic Pro (.logicx), Ableton Live (.als), FL Studio (.flp), Pro Tools (.ptx) and REAPER (.rpp) in all 20 conversion directions, but the offline bounce itself targets Logic Pro today.

Published September 2026

You can print a project's tracks to audio with the DAW closed, and they come out through their real installed third-party plugin chains — not dry. Connect the Doseedo MCP server, ask an agent to bounce a session, and the Dø Desktop app on your Mac claims the render job and works through it in the background. What comes back is downloadable stem files. A stock DAW cannot do a headless bounce through your installed plugins; this can. Today that is Logic Pro on macOS, and it covers audio tracks — instrument and MIDI tracks still need the DAW open, and that is reported per track rather than dropped from the set without a word.

The plugin part is the hard part, and it is worth being precise about why. A project file holds the arrangement — regions, positions, levels, the names of the plugins on each channel. It does not hold the sound of those plugins: a compressor's DSP lives in the compressor, installed and authorised on one particular machine. Anything rendering in the cloud from a project file alone can only return dry regions. So the render is done where the plugins are.

The mechanism, end to end

Four steps, and only the third one touches your machine.

The agent reads the session. One call returns it as structure: every track with its id, every region positioned in both beats and seconds, mixer levels in real dB, the plugin chain on each channel, tempo and markers. The agent needs the track ids to say what to print, and it needs the chain listing to know what it is printing through.
The agent queues a bounce. doseedo_bounce_session takes the session and the tracks to print and returns a task_id. Nothing has rendered yet; the job is sitting in a queue waiting for a machine that can do it.
Dø Desktop claims the job. The desktop app polls for work belonging to your account. When it takes this one, it renders each requested track through the actual insert chain on that channel: via Logic if Logic happens to be open, headless if it is not. Your plugins, your settings, your licences, locally.
The agent collects the result. doseedo_wait_task polls the task id until it finishes. The rendered audio comes back as plain https URLs the agent fetches with curl, together with a per-track account of what printed.

The queue is what makes this usable from anywhere: you describe the render rather than drive it. A job queued from a phone, a CI runner or a terminal on another continent renders whenever the Mac with the plugins picks the work up.

What a batch looks like

The single-session case is a sentence. The reason people search for this is usually the plural case: a folder of projects, an archive that needs stems, a client library that has to be delivered as multitracks. Batching is the same tool called repeatedly, and the agent handles the bookkeeping:

> List my Doseedo sessions from the last six months. For each one
  that has more than four audio tracks, bounce every audio track
  through its plugin chain, wait for all of them, and put the
  download URLs in a table grouped by session — and tell me which
  tracks did not render.

What the agent does: lists the sessions, reads each one to get track ids and see which tracks are audio, queues a bounce per session, polls the task ids, then assembles the table. Each job is independent, so a session that fails shows up in the table as the one that produced no stems rather than taking the run down. There is no batch window to leave open and no project to click through one at a time.

Queue a bounce from your agent

Install the connector in Claude Code with the command below, or add it as a custom connector in the Claude phone and web apps. Dø Desktop on your Mac does the rendering.

The Doseedo MCP server →

Install

The endpoint is hosted Streamable HTTP at https://api.doseedo.com/mcp. There is nothing to self-host and no SDK. In Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user doseedo https://api.doseedo.com/mcp

The first tool call opens a browser to sign in and approve. For CI, a server, or any client without a browser, pass a key from Settings → API keys instead:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user doseedo https://api.doseedo.com/mcp \
  --header "X-API-Key: dsk_live_..."

The Claude phone and web apps add the same URL through the custom-connector UI, and Cursor registers it in its own MCP config. Then install Dø Desktop on the Mac that holds your plugins and leave it running — that is the machine the render jobs go to. The connector exposes 21 tools in total, covering session control alongside conversion, audio-to-session, separation, transcription and generation.

Getting a project in first

If the thing you want stems from is not already a Doseedo session, it can become one. Projects are read, built, converted and downloaded across Logic Pro (.logicx), Ableton Live (.als), FL Studio (.flp), Pro Tools (.ptx) and REAPER (.rpp), in all 20 conversion directions — see converting projects between DAWs. A finished mix with no project behind it can be turned into a session outright, with the parts separated and transcribed on the way in.

The bounce itself, though, is Logic Pro. A Live set converted into a Logic session can be printed; a Live set left as a Live set cannot — the one place where the five-DAW list and the render capability do not overlap.

What it does not do

Instrument and MIDI tracks need the DAW open. A headless render covers audio tracks. Software-instrument tracks are reported per track as not rendered, so you can see the gap and open Logic for those specific tracks rather than discovering a missing stem later.
Logic Pro, macOS, today. The offline bounce runs through the Dø Desktop bridge on a Mac. Ableton Live, FL Studio, Pro Tools and REAPER projects are read, built, converted and downloaded — not bounced.
Dø Desktop has to be installed and running. No desktop app means no machine to claim the job. Queue it anyway if you like; it renders when the app comes back.
No transport control. Nothing here presses play, moves your playhead, or rides a fader in realtime. It queues renders and edits sessions.
It does not recreate plugins you do not own. The render uses what is installed on that Mac. A chain referencing a plugin that is not there prints without it. If the goal is the opposite — opening a project on a machine that has no plugins at all — see opening a Logic project without the plugins.

For the wider picture of what an agent can do to a session before you print it, see controlling your DAW with an AI agent and the Logic Pro MCP server guide.

FAQ

Can I bounce stems without opening my DAW?

Yes, for audio tracks. Connect the Doseedo MCP server and ask an agent to bounce a session: the tool queues an offline print and Dø Desktop, running on your Mac, claims the job and renders each requested track through its real plugin chain in the background. Logic Pro does not have to be open. The finished stems come back as downloadable files. Instrument and MIDI tracks need the DAW open to render, and that is reported per track rather than dropped silently.

Does the bounce use my real third-party plugins?

Yes. The render happens on your own machine, where the plugins are installed and authorised, so a track prints through the actual insert chain on that channel — your compressor, your saturation, your reverb, at their real settings. This is the reason the work is done locally rather than in the cloud: a plugin chain is not stored inside a project file, it lives in the plugins on the machine. A stock DAW cannot do a headless bounce through your installed plugins; this can.

How do I batch bounce several DAW projects?

Ask the agent to list the sessions in your account, filter them, and bounce each one. Each bounce is queued as its own job with its own task id, and the agent polls them and collects the download URLs. Dø Desktop works through the queue in the background, so the batch runs without you opening a project, switching between them, or sitting at the machine.

Which DAWs can be bounced this way?

Logic Pro on macOS, through the Dø Desktop bridge. Reading a project, building one, converting it and downloading it cover Logic Pro (.logicx), Ableton Live (.als), FL Studio (.flp), Pro Tools (.ptx) and REAPER (.rpp) in all 20 conversion directions, but the offline bounce itself targets Logic Pro today.

What comes back from a bounce?

Rendered audio files, one per track that was printed, reachable as plain https download URLs that the agent can fetch with curl. Alongside them is a per-track report saying what rendered and what did not, so a track that needed the DAW open is visible instead of silently missing from the set.

Do I have to upload my project to bounce it?

Not for the render itself, which runs on your machine against the audio already on your disk. Uploads happen only when the server genuinely needs the samples — separation, transcription, conversion, generation, or a bounce that has to hand audio back to you. For building a session around files you already have, the agent passes the local path and the download returns copy commands that place the files.