Introduction
What Tangle is, who it is for, how its six parts fit together, and what each edition includes.
Tangle is a control system for shows, audiovisual installations, and rooms and buildings. One engine runs your project: it talks to projectors, media servers, lighting, audio processors, players and computers, plays timelines, runs automations and serves the dashboards people use to operate it all.
Who it is for
- Show technicians and designers. Timelines with timecode or cue lists, GO buttons, timecode chase and generation, redundant engines that take over within a second.
- AV integrators. One project per customer site: rooms, devices, scenes and touch panels, built in a visual designer and installed as a service on a rack machine.
- Building and IT teams. Time-of-day automations, monitoring with alerts by email, SMS, push, Slack or Teams, and an API for other systems.
- Developers. A REST API, a WebSocket protocol, an MCP server for AI assistants, and SDKs to write device modules in JavaScript, TypeScript or Python.
The six parts
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| tangle-core | The engine. Keeps a library of projects and runs one, runs device modules, turns intents into device actions, plays timelines, runs automations, listeners and Sentinel. Serves the REST API (/api/v1), the WebSocket (/ws), MCP (/mcp), the designer (/designer) and dashboards (/d/<id>), all on port 7340. |
| tangle-connect | Device modules (over 100 drivers), the device creator and the tangle command. A module is a small program that speaks one device's protocol. tangle installs modules, adds and imports devices, tests connections and scans the network. |
| tangle-interact | Dashboards: a builder, a runtime for browsers, tablets and wall panels, and a generator that makes room, show and overview dashboards from the project. Two skins, Console and Lobby, and four control styles. |
| tangle-designer | The visual editor for a project: rooms, devices, scenes, timelines, automations, variables, listeners, maps, dashboards, lighting and Sentinel, in one project tree. Runs in a browser at /designer, or as a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux that includes its own core. |
| tangle-sentinel | Monitoring inside core: watches devices, core nodes, network probes and pushed metrics, raises alerts and sends notifications. Pro and Ultimate editions. |
| tangle-simulator | Virtual devices (tangle-sim) that speak real protocols on real ports, so you can build and test a project without hardware. |
How they fit together
From the top down:
- Clients: the designer, dashboards on screens and panels, your scripts and AI assistants. They all talk to core over REST, WebSocket or MCP on port 7340.
- tangle-core: holds the project and live device state, runs intents, timelines, automations and Sentinel.
- Device modules: one process per module, started and supervised by core. Installed from the designer's Driver library or with the
tanglecommand. - Devices: projectors, media servers, lighting, DSPs, players and computers, or tangle-simulator virtual devices while you build.
Everything is stored in one project file (JSON or YAML) that core loads from its project library. The designer, dashboards and API all change the project through core, which checks every change before applying it and writes it back to the file. Device modules run as separate processes, so a module that crashes is restarted without stopping the show. For redundancy, two or more cores run the same project and one takes over if the primary fails.
Read Concepts for the vocabulary: devices, capabilities, intents, scenes, timelines, automations and dashboards.
Editions
Tangle comes in three editions: Lite, Pro and Ultimate. The edition is set by your license and decided when core loads a project; a license change applies at the next start and never interrupts a running show.
| Lite | Pro | Ultimate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Controlled devices | 20 | 100 | Unlimited |
| DMX universes | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Timelines and cue lists (total) | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Timecode chase and generation (LTC, MTC, Art-Net timecode) | No | Yes | Yes |
| PTP clock sync | No | Yes | Yes |
| Sentinel monitoring | No | Yes | Yes |
| External API (REST and MCP for third-party clients) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Redundancy | No | Add-on, per redundant host | Included, unlimited hosts |
| Designer, dashboards, scenes, automations | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The built-in designer and dashboards always work, whatever the edition. DMX universes are counted as distinct universe values in device settings.
Without a license
Core runs without a license in one of two modes:
- Free designer (default). Program a project on one computer, with no limit on devices, universes or timelines. Core serves this computer only, the external API and Sentinel are off, and device connections and timelines pause at the end of every hour until you resume.
- Demo (
tangle-core run --demo). Every feature except redundancy, up to 10 devices, other machines can connect. Sessions last one hour.
See Licensing to activate a license, move one, or activate a computer that has no internet.
Where to go next
- Install: download the desktop app, the core service, the CLI and modules.
- Quick start: build a first project with a simulated projector in about 15 minutes.
- Tutorial: a gallery installation: a complete project from scratch, with the simulator, automations and a staff dashboard.
- Concepts: the words used across Tangle.
- Designer: the visual editor, section by section.
- Devices and the device catalog: add and configure devices.
- Timelines, automations and listeners: shows, building logic and triggers from other systems.
- Device creator: drivers for devices Tangle does not know yet.
- Dashboards: control panels for operators, rooms and walls.
- Redundancy, Sentinel and operations: run Tangle in production.
- REST API, WebSocket, MCP, CLI and module SDK: integrate and extend.