Apr 15

Making the Patch Format More User Friendly, Patch Skill for AI

In the long run, the preset format should become super simple for editing in text editors. And of course, users can use LLMs for editing. Mela 7.6 is making it possible to cut, copy and paste modules via the actions menu: - As an alternative to drag-and-drop, action menus now provide Cut, Copy, and Paste actions. - A module can be inserted, appended, or used to replace another via the Paste action. - A copied module can be pasted into another instance of Mela, as a file in Finder or Files, or as text in a text editor. - A preset copied from Finder or Files can be pasted as a module into an instance of Mela. - Presets can be edited in a text editor, for example, by changing parameter values, then pasted back as modules (as long as the format remains intact). Currently, the format is JSON, but the plan is to simplify it further to maximise clarity and minimise the effort required to make edits. At some point, the format will be properly documented, but in the meantime, I will leave some useful notes here.

In Progress

3 weeks ago

Here's the initial draft skill. Let me know what sort of issues you come across. https://nikolozi.com/mela/patch-skill.md

Pinned

2 weeks ago

Updated to include signal behaviour for each module: preserves Poly, collapses Poly to Mono, or conditional, with the relevant conditions explained.

3 weeks ago

any progress on this? would love the current schema as context for LLMs, any chance you can share it as it stand in 7.15?

3 weeks ago

Hey James, As I mentioned in another post, I'm considering switching to Pkl as it has much nicer syntax than JSON. And as part of doing it, there are a few major changes I wanted to make to the format: merge "modulations" and "parameters" into "root", so that the module description would contain parameter values and modulation information. Also, I wanted to simplify module IDs and names, where one could omit some bits and Mela could auto-fill them. For example, IDs could simply be unique numbers, and if the user hasn't provided a custom name, the name of the module would be "ModuleType ID", e.g. "VA Oscillator 3". Anyway, the current JSON format is still quite simple and, for LLMs, they are super easy to create and edit. I should be able to create a patch-skill.md file and host it on my site, which will describe the latest patch format. Just need to create an auto-generator that will list parameter ranges and values for indexed lists. I'll bump this up in priority.

2 weeks ago

I'm not 100% sure whether UserJot automatically sends notifications for all replies when you reply at least once. Just a heads-up, I added a pinned reply with the initial draft skill.

2 weeks ago

This is incredible Nikolozi! I’ll dig in to this soon and let you know how I get on.

May 1, 2026

Haven't left any notes here thus far because I'm changing and experimenting with the format every day. The main goal remains to make it as simple as possible for the user to edit. I haven't reached the point where I'd switch from JSON yet, but when I do, Pkl is a strong candidate. But I have to test it first: https://pkl-lang.org

changed status toIn Progress·Apr 15, 2026