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kobox

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kobox

Play your Teenage Engineering EP-133 K.O. II by talking to Claude. kobox is a small MCP server that turns plain language into MIDI — trigger pads, lay down grooves, run scales — straight to the hardware.

"Connect to my K.O. II, then play an ascending C minor pentatonic on group A."

That works. So does asking for a 16-step beat, a single note, or a melody in any of eleven scales.

Install — the easy way (Claude Code)

You don't need to know any Python. Claude does the setup.

  1. Plug the K.O. II into your computer over USB and turn it on.

  2. Paste this repo's URL into Claude Code and say: "Install this MCP for me." It reads CLAUDE.md and handles the environment, dependencies, registration, and a connection check on its own.

  3. Restart Claude Code, then say "connect to my K.O. II" and start playing.

Related MCP server: mcp-koii

Install — one line (if you already use uv)

uvx --from git+https://github.com/yangyue1974/kobox kobox

Then point your MCP client at the command uvx --from git+https://github.com/yangyue1974/kobox kobox.

Claude Desktop

Desktop can't run setup commands. Install once on a machine that has Claude Code (above), then copy the command + absolute path shown by claude mcp get kobox into Desktop's MCP server config.

Things to say

You say

kobox does

"Connect to my K.O. II"

Auto-detects and opens the EP-133 MIDI port

"Trigger the pad printed 5 on group B"

Fires B5

"Play a 16-step groove with pads A., A0 and A1"

Sequences a beat with timing

"Run an ascending C major scale on group A"

Plays the scale by degrees

"Play C3, then F#4"

Sends raw notes

"What scales can you do?"

Lists all eleven

Tools

Tool

Purpose

connect · disconnect

Open / close the device (auto-detects the EP-133)

list_ports

List available MIDI output ports

trigger_pad

Fire a pad by its printed label (A., A1, D9 …)

play_note

Play a MIDI note number or name (C3, F#4)

play_pattern

Sequence a series of hits with per-hit timing

play_scale

Play a melody as scale degrees — 11 scales, any root

list_scales

List the supported scales and their intervals

device_info

Report the device's note map and pad layout

How pads are named

A pad reference is the group letter (A–D) plus the symbol printed on the keypad — not a 1-to-12 index. Within a group the labels run from the lowest note upward:

.   0   enter   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9

So A. is the lowest pad in group A and A1 is the pad printed "1" (the fourth one). The four groups sit in their own octave bands: A = MIDI 36–47, B = 48–59, C = 60–71, D = 72–83. This was measured on real hardware, not guessed.

What kobox deliberately doesn't do

  • It doesn't claim to know your sounds. Every K.O. II has different samples loaded, so kobox addresses pads by position and never pretends to know what a pad sounds like.

  • It doesn't switch sounds. On current firmware, MIDI program change doesn't change pad sounds — so there's no tool that fakes it.

Requirements

A Teenage Engineering EP-133 K.O. II, a USB cable, and either Claude Code or uv. Python and the MIDI backend are installed for you during setup.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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Resources

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