Welcome to audio-plugin-coder Discussions!

[Noizefield]

Welcome to Audio Plugin Coder (APC) Discussions! 🎵

Welcome to the APC community! This is a space for audio developers, AI enthusiasts, musicians, and creative coders to connect, share knowledge, and help each other build amazing audio plugins.

About APC

Audio Plugin Coder (APC) is an AI-powered framework for building professional audio plugins from concept to shipped product. Using a structured five-phase workflow (Dream → Plan → Design → Implement → Ship), APC guides you through the entire plugin development lifecycle with the help of AI agents.

Key Features

• 🤖 AI-Driven Development - Works with Claude Code, Antigravity, Kilo, and other agents
• 🎯 Structured Workflows - Five-phase system ensures quality at every step
• 🎨 Dual UI Frameworks - Choose between Visage (pure C++) or WebView (HTML5 Canvas)
• 📊 State Management - Automatic progress tracking and validation
• 🔧 Self-Improving - Auto-captures troubleshooting knowledge
• 🏗️ Production Ready - JUCE 8 integration with CMake build system

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Discussion Categories

🎨 Showcase

Share your plugins, designs, and creative projects with the community!

• Plugin Showcases - Show off your finished plugins
• Work in Progress - Share early designs and get feedback
• UI/UX Inspiration - Post design mockups and visual concepts
• Audio Demos - Share sound examples and presets

Example topics:

• "Just shipped my first reverb plugin! 🎉"
• "Feedback on this UI design for a compressor?"
• "Here's my tape saturation plugin in action"

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❓ Q&A

Ask questions and get help from the community.

• Getting Started - Installation, setup, and first steps
• Workflow Help - Understanding the five-phase system
• JUCE Questions - Framework-specific queries
• DSP Development - Audio processing algorithms
• UI Development - Visage or WebView implementation
• AI Agent Tips - Getting the most from your coding assistant

Before posting:

1. Check the FAQ
2. Review the troubleshooting guide
3. Search existing discussions

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💡 Ideas

Propose new features, improvements, or share concepts.

• Feature Requests - Suggest improvements to APC
• New Skills - Ideas for domain knowledge modules
• Workflow Enhancements - Better ways to develop plugins
• Integration Ideas - Connect APC with other tools
• Research & Concepts - Experimental approaches

Good idea posts include:

• Clear description of the concept
• Use case and benefits
• Potential implementation approach
• Willingness to contribute

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🐛 Troubleshooting

Get help with errors, bugs, and technical issues.

• Build Errors - CMake, compilation, linking issues
• WebView Problems - Crashes, blank screens, resource loading
• DAW Integration - VST3 not appearing, crashes on load
• State Management - Recovery, validation errors
• Performance Issues - CPU usage, latency, optimization

When reporting issues, please include:

• Error message (full text if possible)
• Current phase from status.json
• Steps to reproduce
• Platform (Windows/macOS/Linux)
• DAW being used (if applicable)
• What you've already tried

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Community Guidelines

Be Respectful & Inclusive

• Treat everyone with respect and kindness
• Welcome newcomers and help them get started
• Remember that we all have different skill levels
• No harassment, discrimination, or toxic behavior

Be Constructive

• Provide helpful, actionable feedback
• Focus on the issue, not the person
• Share knowledge generously
• Celebrate others' successes

Be Clear & Specific

• Use descriptive titles for discussions
• Provide context and details
• Include code snippets or examples when relevant
• Format your posts for readability

Stay On Topic

• Post in the appropriate category
• Keep discussions focused on audio plugin development
• APC-related topics are preferred, but JUCE/DSP discussions are welcome
• For off-topic chat, use the General category

No Spam or Self-Promotion

• Don't post unsolicited promotional content
• It's okay to share your plugins in Showcase
• Avoid repetitive posting
• Don't use the community for commercial solicitation

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Getting Started

New to APC?

1. Read the Documentation

   • Project Overview - What is APC and key features
   • Plugin Development Lifecycle - The five-phase workflow
   • Command Reference - All available commands
   • FAQ - Common questions answered

2. Set Up Your Environment

   # Clone with submodules
   git clone --recursive https://github.com/Noizefield/audio-plugin-coder.git
   cd audio-plugin-coder

3. Create Your First Plugin

   /dream MyFirstPlugin
   

4. Join the Conversation

   • Introduce yourself in the General category
   • Ask questions in Q&A
   • Share your progress in Showcase

New to Audio Plugin Development?

Don't worry! APC is designed to help developers at all levels. Here are some resources:

• JUCE Documentation - Learn the underlying framework
• DSP Resources - Digital signal processing concepts
• Audio Developer Conference - Talks and tutorials

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Helpful Resources

Documentation

Resource	Description
README	Project overview and quick start
Plugin Development Lifecycle	Five-phase workflow guide
Command Reference	All slash commands and scripts
FAQ	Frequently asked questions
Troubleshooting Guide	Common issues and solutions
Project Structure	Directory layout and organization
State Management	How APC tracks project state
WebView Framework	Building HTML/CSS/JS UIs
Build System	CMake configuration details

External Resources

Resource	Link
JUCE Documentation	https://docs.juce.com/
VST3 SDK	https://developer.steinberg.help/display/VST/VST+3+Home
WebView2 Documentation	https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/
Awesome Music DSP	https://github.com/olilarkin/awesome-musicdsp

Community Channels

• GitHub Issues - Bug reports and feature requests
• GitHub Discussions - This forum! For questions and community chat
• Contributing Guide - CONTRIBUTING.md - How to contribute

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Maintainer Tips

For APC Maintainers & Contributors

Issue Triage:

• Label issues appropriately (bug, enhancement, question, etc.)
• Respond to new issues within 48 hours
• Request more information when needed
• Close resolved issues promptly

Discussion Management:

• Pin important announcements
• Redirect off-topic posts to appropriate categories
• Thank community members for contributions
• Highlight exceptional community content

Documentation:

• Keep this welcome page updated
• Ensure links are working
• Add new resources as they become available
• Document common solutions for future reference

Quick Reference for Maintainers

Task	Action
Pin Discussion	Click "..." → Pin discussion
Mark as Answer	Click "..." → Mark as answer
Transfer Category	Click "..." → Transfer discussion
Lock Discussion	Click "..." → Lock conversation

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Recognition

Contributors

A huge thank you to everyone who contributes to APC! Whether you're:

• Reporting bugs
• Suggesting features
• Improving documentation
• Sharing your plugins
• Helping other community members

Your contributions make APC better for everyone.

Acknowledgments

• JUCE Team - For the industry-standard audio framework
• The AI Community - For advancing AI-assisted development
• TÂCHES (glittercowboy) - Inspiration for context engineering systems

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License & Legal

APC is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

• You can sell plugins made with APC
• No attribution required (but appreciated!)
• Contributions are under the same MIT License

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Ready to start building? Create a new discussion or check out existing ones. We're excited to see what you create! 🚀

Built with ❤️ (and a lot of tokens) for the audio development community.

[slashermatt-ux]

Man, I'm having a really hard time understanding how to install this.
I downloaded with Git desktop first, and the repository is in my \user folder but I see no exe.
Then I tried your code, copy pasted into PowerShell. Had to give it permission manually to execute de script, but finally installed it (Into System32??? wtf?)
Still, I have no idea how to even start this. I admit I am absolutely not a programmer

[Noizefield]

I am sorry that you have trouble, it's maybe not as self explanatory as I was thinking. So please excuse me for that. I would highly recommend that you get yourself a command line interface, for example have a look at CODEX from Open AI - I think right now this is even for free - or if you want have a good IDE I can highly recommend Visual Studio Code or some tool like Cursor. Once you have installed one of these tools you can just open the folder with the content of Audio Plugin Coder and use the terminal commands which I have shown in the video for example /dream and then blah blah blah :)

Please let me know if you have furhter questions.

[slashermatt-ux]

Hi and thank you for taking the time to reply!
I managed to get it to work yesterday, at least up to a point. Took a little digging to find out what I was supposed to do but ended up with Visual Studio Code, Kilo Extension (with the free MiniMax2.1 Model) and the commands work perfectly! (maybe a little non intuitive for non-programmers like me :/ )
However, APC can't build the plugin. The last step fails, asks for Visual Studio 2022 (community), the C++ Workload, MSVC v143 and something else I can't remember, Installed all that, almost filled my main drive. He is still not able to build/ship the plugin :(

EDIT: One thing he keeps popping up with is that JuceHeader.h is not found, then he says that he'll rebuild the plugin with "Modern JUCE 8" but still can't make it, says there are issues with JUCE 8 compatibility
EDIT 2: I see the issue, clearly there is something missing on my part, APC keeps running commands that ask for missing files or similar issues. He then comes up with "solutions" that rewrite the whole code, but still ends up with the same issue.
Problem is, I have absolutely no idea what I'm missing - supposedly, I installed everything and more.
EDIT3: after about 2 hours of APC fighting himself, changing stuff in order to get around certain errors, he decided he finally succeded building. Unfortunately, he was mistaken. The .vst3 file is there, but it is in a jumbled mess of folders, and, especially, does not work. Empty interface when loaded into DAW.

[Noizefield]

Hello slashermatt-ux, sorry to hear that. If you are on the Kilo extension you can try this model, it is free right now: Z.ai: GLM 5 (free)
And much better then MiniMax2.1.

One thing I always do is to remind the LLM to have a look at the troubleshooting folder (e,g, .kilocode\troubleshooting ) and if it's still not able to create the plug in, you could ask the AI to build the plugin: nf_gnarly, which is a workinf example in the plugin folder. ( /impl nf_gnarly and then /ship nf_gnarly).
Once It could create the VST plug in. you can then tell the AI to have a look at these samples... it should then be able to also finally compile and build your own plugin

[codmpm]

Hey @Noizefield. This looks absolutely incredible.
Just tryin to get my head around using it.

I started a local Server with qwen3-coder-30b-a3b-instruct in LM Studio, running via the dev environment there on http://127.0.0.1:1234.

I loaded apc into Visual Studio Code and have a chat window. But this want's to use CoPilot.
How do I define the .agent/-workflow to use the local API.

[Noizefield]

Sorry I forgot to mention that you might need to adapt the .agent folder to the specification of the (new) Coding Agent extension for Visual Studio Code, but you can ask the AI to modify the .agent folder
I would usually do something like this: " Please have a look at the .agent folder and copy its content to .XYZ and modify all files in order to meet the specification of .XYZ" (where XYZ is the new coding agent like OpenCode)

[codmpm]

Thank you very very much. This is great info!
I admit, that the local LLM is kind of long shot.

The main thing I did not understand from your documentation is how to get the Coding Agent set up in the first place.
Will try and get back to you.

Much thanks.

[Noizefield]

You basically just open the audio plugin coder folder in an IDE like VS Code and then start an coding agent like OpenCode, CODEX, KILO, Claude Code, Antigravity, GitHub Copilot etc. and start typing: /dream bla bla
The agent then reads its dedicated .XYZ folder with the instructions and knows (hopefully) what to do.
Have a read here: https://kilo.ai/docs/customize/custom-instructions

[codmpm]

I installed the continue Plugin for VSCode which lets me select "LM Studio" as a provider. I am obviously blind and can't find the provider settings in Kilo to add LM Studio locally.

With CMD-SHIFT-L I can open a chat window and talk to qwen3-coder-30b-a3b-instruct on http://127.0.0.1:1234 - so this works.

Obviously I'm missing the agent-definiton in (e.g.) .continue in the agents folder as the commands like /dream are not present.

Sadly this did not do the trick.

Please have a look at the .agent folder and copy its content to .continue and modify all files in order to meet the specification of the continue vs code plugin.

Could you point me in the right direction for the agent-file? As I think this is very close to working.

Here are the steps to add LM Studio as model in VS Code using Continue:

• Install "continue" as a Plugin

• Klick on the "Continue" Icon in the sidebar
• Go to settings (cog on the upper right corner)
• Klick on the Models Icon (looks like a box)
• Pres the Add icon (+ in circle) to add a model
• Choose LM Studio as provider
• Rest should be configured automatically

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PS: I know that right now compiliing wont work on a mac. Will use VS Code on Windows with LM Studio on the mac after testing.

[codmpm]

Ok... got it partly working in Kilo Code... much simpler than I thought. See https://kilo.ai/docs/ai-providers/lmstudio
Just go to settings, provider Tab and select "LM Studio" as provider. Select one of your installed models and hit save.

But then I get an API error which I could not resolve, yet.
This is the error in LM Studio when using Kilo Code:

2026-02-16 16:17:28 [ERROR]
[qwen3-coder-30b-a3b-instruct] Error rendering prompt with jinja template: "Unknown StringValue filter: safe".

This is usually an issue with the model's prompt template. If you are using a popular model, you can try to search the model under lmstudio-community, which will have fixed prompt templates. If you cannot find one, you are welcome to post this issue to our discord or issue tracker on GitHub. Alternatively, if you know how to write jinja templates, you can override the prompt template in My Models > model settings > Prompt Template.. Error Data: n/a, Additional Data: n/a