Plugins — describe it, build it, ship it.

How the plugin system works

A plugin is a small bundle of code + an asset folder. Drop it in the library and it shows up alongside the built-ins on the next refresh — no rebuild, no restart. The new source or effect picks up the same inspector, the same audio routing, the same modulation surface as anything that ships with Visualz.

AI-generated plugins — tokens for a working bundle

Open the generator in the library, type what you want (“a liquid mercury floor with audio-reactive ripples; beat onsets send a shockwave outward”), tick the permissions you're willing to grant, and run it. The flow is three stages:

• Plan (~300 tokens) — a cheap structured emit: plugin name, scene summary, parameter list with kinds, audio reactions, and the permissions the plan actually wants to use. Review it before committing.
• Generate (~2,000 tokens) — produces a complete manifest.json + index.js and writes them straight to your plugins dir. The registry refreshes, and the new source shows up in the picker under the plan's id.
• Fix it (~1,500 tokens, up to 3 retries) — if the generated plugin throws on load or at runtime, the “Fix it” button hands the prior code + the error back to the model and retries the install. Three attempts before you have to refine the prompt.

Inputs + media — plugins consume user content

Plugins expose the same kinds of inspector controls the built-ins do — numbers, switches, colors, dropdowns, curves, and media pickers. A media param surfaces a library picker so the plugin can use your videos, images, textures, or sprite sheets directly. Every numeric control gets the full modulation surface (audio bands, onset envelope, mouse, sweep, random-on-beat) for free.

Permissions you control

Plugins declare which capabilities they want. You see the list before you install, and you decide what to grant.

• ✓ Camera — webcam feed as a live texture.
• ✓ Microphone — mic input alongside the engine's audio analyser.
• ✓ Library — adds a media picker so the plugin can use your videos, images, textures, or sprite sheets.
• ✓ MIDI — talk to MIDI controllers and synths.
• ✓ Filesystem — read assets the plugin shipped with.
• • Network — coming soon.

Audio reactivity (FFT bands + onset detection) and the GPU are always available — they're table stakes for every Visualz plugin.

Hand-write your own

Prefer code to prompts? Write the plugin, drop the folder in the library, and Visualz picks it up on next refresh. See Bitty Ditty Blaster below for a polished example of what a third-party source can do.

Example: Bitty Ditty Blaster

The reference plugin ships as a five-layer 3D scene — reflective background, spaced color bars, texture-cycling tube with per-disc audio band reactivity, particle bursts, and a post pass with RGB shift, scanlines, grain, and a single-plane kaleidoscope mirror. Read it as a blueprint for what a polished third-party source looks like.

Publish your plugins

Anything you generate or hand-write can be published to the marketplace as a listing — bundled with its assets and its declared permissions, so installers see exactly what they're granting before they accept. Publishing and installing assets in the marketplace are free for everyone right now while we grow the catalog.