How it works
Local control, with the DAW in charge
Prest does not replace the playback engine. It adds a browser control surface around the projects and transport in REAPER or Ableton Live.
The three parts
- The DAW owns the project, playback position, and transport.
- The Prest runtime runs beside the DAW and serves the interface.
- Your browser devices open that interface over the same local network.
What “offline-first” means here
A show does not depend on a Prest cloud account or remote Prest service. The host and browser still communicate over your local network, so a browser without that connection cannot control the show. The current product does not include a service worker and is not documented as a fully offline PWA.
Discovery
The runtime advertises the canonical local name prest.local when mDNS is available. If local-name discovery is unavailable, use the host address reported by the running integration. Exact end-user discovery wording still needs clean-install validation before public release.
The trust boundary
No login protects the control surface. Any device that can reach Prest on the network can control transport and open projects. Connect the host and stage devices to a band-owned router or hotspot. Do not use public or shared venue Wi-Fi.