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You don’t run a skill yourself. Describe the task in chat, and Reagent loads the matching skill and follows its steps.

Available Skills

  • Each approval step named below needs your Allow, unless you use Full access (Permissions).
  • To see which skill ran, open the reply’s summary line and find the Load skill step.
  • If Reagent doesn’t pick up a skill, ask for it by name, such as “Use the create-variations skill.” The names are create-variations, create-building-blocks, ucs-renamer and ucs-category-lookup.
  • You can’t add, change or remove skills. Save your own instructions as a slash command.

Create Variations

Create Variations turns one sound, the source, into several different-sounding copies, for game audio that shouldn’t repeat or for creative sound design. The source can be one item or layered items on several tracks. Each copy swaps layers for material from a pool, such as other recordings of the same kind of sound, and is then randomized. Without a pool, copies differ only by randomization. To randomize selected items without building variations, see Variation Tools.

Set Up Your Selection

With a layered source and at least one alternative selected, Reagent can find the source and pool by itself:
  1. Stack the source layers, each on its own track, starting within 2 seconds of each other.
  2. Put each layer’s alternatives on that layer’s track. Start each one more than 2 seconds from the stack and from every other alternative, even on different tracks, or Reagent may take them for the source. A copy takes pool material only from its own track. Long recordings with silence between sounds work well, because Reagent splits them at the silences.
  3. Select everything. The tightest group becomes the source, and the rest the pool.
  4. Ask for variations. Reagent builds the copies after the last item in your project, each in a region named reagent var 1, reagent var 2 and so on.
For any other selection, tell Reagent what to use:
  • A single-item source: say which item, for example “Use the first selected item as the source and the rest as the pool.” Keep the pool on the source’s track.
  • Alternatives later on the same tracks: select only the source and ask Reagent to use the items further down those tracks. It uses every later item there, selected or not.
  • Copies only: select only the source. In a new chat with no stack, Reagent copies your whole selection and uses no pool.
Create Variations changes the item and track selection, moves the edit cursor and replaces what you copied in REAPER. Build variations and Randomize items are separate approval steps. Each part of the work is its own undo step, named reagent: ….

How Create Variations Works

  • Splits the pool at silences into one item per sound, without the silence. Say “don’t trim the pool” to skip this.
  • Lines up peaks. Reagent marks peaks in the source and pool items with take markers, then lines up pool material peak to peak. Sustained sounds with no clear peak get no marker and line up by their start. Say “don’t align to peaks” to skip this.
  • Rotates through the pool evenly, least-used in this chat first. The original layer stays in the rotation, and your pool items stay where they are.
  • Leaves a gap before and between copies: 5 seconds or 10% of the source’s length, whichever is longer.
  • Randomizes only the copies, at the intensity you name or the default.
In the same chat:
  • “Make 3 more” builds more copies from the same source, numbering regions from reagent var 1 again.
  • Randomizing again adds to the earlier pitch, volume and timing changes. To start from the unrandomized copies, undo the last randomization first.
  • Reagent may reuse an earlier source and pool instead of your new selection. Start a new chat, or say which items are the source and which are the pool. If it picked the wrong items, undo first.

Randomization Intensity

Name an intensity: none (changes only what you name), default (used if you don’t name one), high or maximum. Even the default can move pitch by more than an octave.
  • A pitch envelope is a pitch bend drawn over the item. At high and maximum, each variation copy gets one, on its longest item. Outside a variation build, each randomized item has a 20% chance of getting one.
  • Maximum also tries to reverse about 1 in 10 items.
  • Randomization keeps each item’s fades.
For subtle changes, name the properties and ranges you want. They replace the intensity’s ranges. Add “nothing else” to change only what you name:
To repeat a result, ask which seed Reagent used, undo the randomization, then ask for that seed.

UCS Renamer

UCS Renamer gives the selected REAPER items UCS names, based on their audio. Reagent picks it only for UCS naming, so mention UCS in your request. UCS (Universal Category System) is a public standard for naming and organizing sound effects libraries. A UCS name has four parts, separated by underscores: Put together: METLImpt_Pipe Wrench Hit_JD_FOLEY01. Select the items and ask:
Reagent then:
  1. Classifies each item on your computer with the built-in UCS classifier.
  2. Describes the sound. If you didn’t say what it is, Reagent may analyze the audio for words such as “Heavy”, “Bright” or “Rapid”. FXName stays short, ideally under 25 characters.
  3. Asks for your CreatorID and SourceID unless you gave them in this chat. They don’t carry over to a new chat. Include them in your request to skip the question.
  4. Avoids duplicate names. If a name would repeat another new name or an existing item name, Reagent adds a space and a two-digit number to the end of FXName, such as Pipe Wrench Hit 01.
  5. Renames the takes with a short script, shown as a Run script approval step.
Check the new names, and ask Reagent to fix any lowercase CatID (metlimpt to METLImpt). UCS Renamer changes take names, not files on disk. Reagent can’t write UCS information into files yet (Writing Metadata).

UCS Category Lookup

Ask which UCS category fits a sound:
Reagent gives the best-matching CatID with its category and subcategory, why it fits, alternatives and when to use them, and an example filename. Before you rename a whole library, check the CatID against the official UCS list. The lookup works only from your description. To pick a category from the audio, use UCS Renamer or ask Reagent to classify the items.