SongSage

SongSage is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that connects BirdNET-Analyzer-Sierra with Claude Desktop, enabling natural language interaction with bioacoustic data for wildlife monitoring and conservation research.

---

Why SongSage?

Bioacoustic monitoring is a powerful tool for studying biodiversity, but BirdNET outputs are static CSV files requiring custom scripts to analyze. SongSage transforms these detections into an interactive, conversational analysis system.

Ecologists, conservation practitioners, and citizen scientists can now query, summarize, and visualize acoustic data using natural language—no coding required.

Inspired by multimodal wildlife monitoring research, including the SmartWilds framework at The Wilds Conservation Center.

---

Architecture

flowchart TB
    subgraph Users
        ECO[Ecologists]
        CIT[Citizen Scientists]
    end

    subgraph Interface
        CD[Claude Desktop]
        MCP[SongSage MCP Server]
    end

    subgraph Pipeline
        AF[Audio Files]
        BN[BirdNET-Analyzer-Sierra]
        DR[Detection Results]
    end

    subgraph Analytics
        QRY[Query Engine]
        VIZ[Visualization]
    end

    ECO --> CD
    CIT --> CD
    CD --> MCP
    AF --> BN
    BN --> DR
    DR --> MCP
    MCP --> QRY
    MCP --> VIZ
    QRY --> Users
    VIZ --> Users

---

Key Capabilities

Feature	Description
Natural Language Queries	Ask questions about your data in plain English
Species Detection	Leverage BirdNET's species recognition
Temporal Analytics	Analyze daily, seasonal, and long-term patterns
Interactive Filtering	Filter by species, confidence, time, and location
Heatmap Generation	Visualize activity patterns across time and species

---

Installation

See docs/installation.md for the complete setup guide, including platform-specific configuration for Mac/Linux and Windows.

Quick summary:

1. Clone the repo and run setup.sh (Mac/Linux) or set up the venv manually (Windows)
2. Add SongSage to your Claude Desktop config with full absolute paths
3. Optionally create a .env file if BirdNET isn't auto-detected

---

Usage Examples

Daily Monitoring

"Summarize bird activity from today's recordings."

Rare Species

"Find species detected fewer than 3 times with confidence above 0.7."

Peak Activity

"When are birds most active during the day?"

Species Deep Dive

"Show me everything about Northern Cardinal detections."

Temporal Comparison

"Compare bird activity between June and July."

Visualization

"Generate a heatmap of activity by hour for the top 10 species."

---

Tools

Analysis

Tool	Description
analyze_audio	Run BirdNET on a single audio file
analyze_audio_batch	Process multiple files with pattern matching
list_audio_files	List available audio files

Queries

Tool	Description
list_detected_species	Species list with counts and confidence stats
get_detections	Raw detection data with flexible filtering
get_daily_summary	Aggregated daily statistics
get_species_details	Detailed info for a specific species
find_rare_detections	Identify potential rare visitors
get_peak_activity_times	Analyze activity patterns

Visualization

Tool	Description
generate_heatmap	Activity heatmaps by time, species, or day
list_heatmap_types	Available visualization types
list_colormaps	Color scheme options

Utilities

Tool	Description
reload_data	Refresh cached data
export_csv	Export filtered results
inspect_csv_structure	Examine data structure

---

Guided Workflows (Prompts)

Pre-built multi-step analyses:

Prompt	Description
daily_summary	Comprehensive daily activity report
species_deep_dive	Full analysis of a single species
analyze_rare_birds	Find and verify rare detections
peak_activity_report	Identify optimal recording times
compare_time_periods	Compare activity across date ranges
quality_check	Identify potential false positives
generate_activity_heatmap	Create and interpret visualizations

---

Project Structure

SongSage/
├── assets/               # Logo 
├── docs/                 # Documentation
│   ├── documentation.md  # Full technical reference
│   └── installation.md   # Installation and configuration guide
├── heatmaps/             # Generated visualizations
├── test_data/            # Sample CSV files for setup verification (see installation guide)
├── mcp_server.py         # MCP server implementation
├── requirements.txt      # Python dependencies
├── __init__.py           # Python package init
├── .env.example          # Configuration template
└── setup.sh              # Linux/macOS installer

---

Research Context

SongSage builds on multimodal wildlife monitoring approaches. The SmartWilds project demonstrates how bioacoustic sensors complement camera traps and drone imagery for ecosystem monitoring—bioacoustics provide continuous temporal coverage and detect species that visual methods miss.

This tool lowers the barrier for researchers and citizen scientists to explore acoustic biodiversity data through conversation rather than code.

---

Acknowledgments

• BirdNET Team — Cornell Lab of Ornithology & Chemnitz University
• Anthropic — Claude and Model Context Protocol
• The Wilds Conservation Center
• Imageomics Institute & ABC Global Center
• SmartWilds Team, The Ohio State University and The Wilds

This work was supported by both the Imageomics Institute and the AI and Biodiversity Change (ABC) Global Center. The Imageomics Institute is funded by the US National Science Foundation's Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR) program under Award #2118240 (Imageomics: A New Frontier of Biological Information Powered by Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning). The ABC Global Center is funded by the US National Science Foundation under Award No. 2330423 and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada under Award No. 585136. This project draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Some additional support was provided by the NSF AI Institute for Intelligent Cyberinfrastructure with Computational Learning in the Environment (ICICLE), funded under NSF Award OAC-2112606. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, or Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.