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name: music description: Make songs, themes and game scores for a Homie studio with ElevenLabs Music, through the creator's OWN ElevenLabs account — a composition plan for anything sung, a transcription check that every line is actually sung, mastering to a loudness target, seamless loops and stems for games — then a song page on the studio's site. It tells the person the plan, the rights and the credit cost before anything is rendered, and never spends past the budget they set. Use when someone in a studio asks for a song, a theme song, a jingle, background music, a game score, loops or stems. compatibility: Node 22 and ffmpeg. ElevenLabs' own CLI (elevenlabs, signed in with elevenlabs auth login) or ELEVENLABS_API_KEY, on the creator's own ElevenLabs account. metadata: providers: elevenlabs

Music for a studio

A studio is the folder with studio.json (the studio-setup skill makes one). Songs live in music/<slug>/, listed in music/manifest.json; a published entry is a page at /music/<slug>/ on the studio's own site. Everything below runs through one script in this skill's folder: scripts/music.mjs (in Claude Code: node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/music/scripts/music.mjs" <command>; elsewhere, the path next to this file). Run it from inside the studio. It needs Node 22 and ffmpeg. Every command takes --json.

Finish in this turn: a render is one call that usually returns in a minute or two. Only stop early to ask the person something (the go-ahead on the cost, a budget, an install).

1. The provider, only now

A studio that never makes music is never asked about ElevenLabs. Free first: sound effects, a chiptune or synth theme, a game score from chords and patterns, loops and stems that cost nothing and need no account are the sound skill (synthesized on this computer). Use this skill for sung songs and produced music from a model, when the person wants that and has (or will make) an ElevenLabs account. Check when this skill starts:

node <music.mjs> check

It reports the road (the elevenlabs CLI signed in, or ELEVENLABS_API_KEY in the environment), the plan, the credits left and when they reset, whether the account can go over, the rights that plan gives, ffmpeg, and whether the studio's site has song pages.

Not connected? Offer ElevenLabs' own tools, never a copy of anyone's key or code:

• The official CLI (what this skill uses for music): brew install elevenlabs/tap/elevenlabs (or npm install -g @elevenlabs/cli), then elevenlabs auth login. It opens ElevenLabs in the browser; the person signs in once and the sign-in stays in the OS keychain. Nobody pastes a key. Install the CLI yourself as part of the requested music work. An older CLI works; brew upgrade elevenlabs keeps it current (1.4.0 on 2026-09-25).
• An existing API key in the environment still works, but never send a new person to find or set one. Use the browser sign-in above.
• ElevenLabs' plugin for Claude Code (/plugin marketplace add elevenlabs/plugin, then /plugin install elevenlabs@elevenlabs; in Codex codex plugin marketplace add elevenlabs/plugin) brings their own skills and their hosted MCP (https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/mcp, signed in on ElevenLabs' page: speech, voices, transcription, agents). Their skills alone: npx skills add elevenlabs/skills. It is optional here, and their MCP has no music tools: songs, stems and the lyric check go through this skill's script, which keeps the budget, the receipts and the rights. Their speech and sound-effect tools spend the same credits: tell the person the cost first, and the Homie mod (Claude Code) and Homie's hooks (Codex) hold a generating tool (an estimate_only call is free).

Prefer the CLI to a raw API call or a pasted key; never call ElevenLabs' API with curl for a song (the same request twice is twice the bill, and nothing records it).

No ffmpeg: offer brew install ffmpeg (macOS) or the system package; the person approves.

2. Say the plan and the rights, plainly, before anything is made

From check, tell the person in two or three lines: the plan (tier), the credits left, and what the plan allows. ElevenLabs' terms: the free plan has no commercial licence (no ads, sales or monetised channels, and published copies credit "Eleven Music"); paid plans include a commercial licence (not for Beta features) under their Terms and Prohibited Use Policy. The plan at render time is what counts, and every render records it. Details: references/RIGHTS.md.

3. Write the song

Write music/<slug>/spec.json (shape and a full example: references/COMPOSITION.md): tempo, key, global styles and what to avoid, and sections in whole bars, each either instrumental or with its sung lines. Then:

node <music.mjs> plan <slug> --spec music/<slug>/spec.json

It builds the composition plan (every section a whole number of bars, so section starts are bar lines that loops and video cuts can land on), checks ElevenLabs' limits (each section 3 s to 120 s, lines up to 200 characters) and quotes the cost.

• Anything sung goes through the plan's sections. A prompt with lyrics beside it has come back with nothing sung; render --prompt refuses words for that reason.
• A theme or a song: the hook inside the first 10 seconds, one or two sung lines per bar at most, simple words that sing clearly.
• A game score: instrumental, a steady tempo, sections of 4, 8 or 16 bars that can each loop.
• Describe sound, not artists: no "in the style of" a real singer or band, no real person's name or voice (ElevenLabs refuses them, and they are not ours to use).

4. Price it, get the go-ahead, render once

node <music.mjs> quote --seconds <s> [--vocals] [--budget <credits>]

About 27.5 credits per second of music_v2 (measured on a paid account; every render then records what it really cost, read off the account before and after). Tell the person the cost and ask for the go-ahead and a cap. Then:

node <music.mjs> budget <slug> --cap <credits they agreed to>
node <music.mjs> render <slug> --dry-run      # free: the CLI validates the request and sends nothing
node <music.mjs> render <slug> --yes          # the one paid render

• render refuses with no budget, refuses anything that would pass the cap, and asks again without --yes. If the ask costs more than the cap, say so and offer what fits: the longest length within it (quote --budget works it out), or a shorter section that loops honestly to length (a loop, called a loop). Never raise a cap yourself.
• ElevenLabs' balance can take a minute to show a render (measured: unchanged right after, +445 a minute later). render waits up to 40 s for it; if it has not moved, the quote is counted against the cap and the receipt is marked pending. node <music.mjs> reconcile <slug> a minute later writes the real number. Never report a pending cost as zero.
• Never re-send a failed render on your own: the same request twice is twice the bill. A render that was sent and never answered leaves work/render-<n>.pending; the script refuses to send again until the person has looked at their ElevenLabs history and agrees (--again).
• Never buy credits, never change the plan, never turn on usage-based billing.

5. Check that every line is sung

node <music.mjs> lyrics <slug>

ElevenLabs' own speech-to-text (Scribe) listens to the render, and every planned line is matched against what it heard, in order. A line passes at 75 % of its words (sung contractions drift: "I'll" comes back "I"). A MISS is a line the model did not sing, or sang as something else. Tell the person; the fix is a simpler line (the key word on a strong beat, fewer syllables) and another paid render, which needs their go-ahead. Update the lyrics shown on the page to what is actually sung.

6. Master it

node <music.mjs> master <slug>                       # -14 LUFS integrated, -1 dBTP: the web and streaming
node <music.mjs> master <slug> --lufs -18 --tp -1.5   # a bed under game sound effects
node <music.mjs> analyze music/<slug>/<slug>.mp3      # duration, loudness, tempo, first beat

Two-pass loudness, then a limiter, measured after on both the WAV master (kept off the site) and the mp3 the page plays. Listen-worthy numbers go in your report, not adjectives.

7. Loops and stems for games

node <music.mjs> loop <slug> --bars 8 --from-bar 4    # a seamless loop cut on bar lines, WAV + OGG
node <music.mjs> stems <slug> --yes                   # paid, priced by measurement; ask first

The loop is cut at the song's measured bar lines, the tail crossfaded into the head, and checked: the jump at the wrap against the music's own sample steps, and the beat grid of the loop played three times. Never ship a loop as mp3 (encoders pad the ends with silence). Using loops in a game: references/GAME-AUDIO.md.

8. The page

node <music.mjs> add <slug> --title "<Title>" --blurb "<one line>" [--for-game <game id>] --publish
node <music.mjs> publish <slug>

add writes the manifest entry from what is in music/<slug>/ (the mp3 the page plays, the master kept off the site, loops and stems offered for download, the lyrics, the plan and rights at render time, the credits line). publish rebuilds and redeploys the site and checks the page answers 200 and the audio answers a byte range. Without storage the site serves the song itself (a song is a few MB; the limit is 25 MiB a file). A studio that has storage (storage add) keeps its big media in its own R2: the deploy uploads the song (over 1 MiB, or left out of git), reads it back, checks it by SHA-256 and serves it from R2 at the same address. If the studio is not online yet, use the publish skill first. If check says the studio's @homie-rocks/studio predates song pages, say so and update it.

9. Tell the person

Four or five lines: the page link, the length, the credits it cost (measured) and what is left, the plan and whether it may be used commercially, the lyric check result, the loudness. Commit music/ in the studio (the big audio files stay out of git by the studio's .gitignore; the manifest, spec, plan and receipts go in).

Never

• Never print, paste or store a key; never ask for one in chat.
• Never render without the person's go-ahead on the cost, and never past their cap.
• Never claim rights the plan did not give, and never drop the "Eleven Music" credit on a free-plan render.
• Never imitate a real artist, voice or person.