Plugin nodes

Every plugin you load lives as a card on the Blueprint canvas with input ports on the left, output ports on the right, and a title bar carrying:

• Plugin name (the user-editable display name, NOT the manufacturer's product name unless you haven't renamed it).
• Category color stripe (effect, instrument, utility, source, driven by the descriptor's category).
• Bypass toggle on the card header.
• Drag handle (the card body) for repositioning.

Loading a plugin

Hit + on the canvas → plugin picker. Two views, set in the toolbar:

• Grid, large cards by vendor. Default. Vendor groups collapsible (click the chevron). Search auto-expands matching vendors.
• List, vendor → family → variants tree. Keyboard-driven.

Filter by format with the chips (AU / VST3 / BUILTIN). The picker persists view-mode and format-chip preferences in localStorage.

Plugin parameters

Open the plugin's window from the card header (Open editor in the menu, or double-click the card on the back canvas). The plugin's native UI opens in a floating window outside the Stagewright canvas, same surface plugin authors design against in every other host.

Parameters are also surfaced as bindings in the front-panel inspector. Bind a knob / fader / toggle to any parameter the plugin exposes; the binding's name updates if you rename the plugin card.

Bypass

Each plugin card has a bypass toggle in its header. Bypass passes audio through unchanged and (for instruments) stops MIDI from reaching the plugin.

Three ways to flip bypass:

1. Click the header toggle on the card.
2. Bind a front-panel toggle widget to plugin-bypass in the inspector → flipping the widget flips bypass.
3. Wire a back-canvas BooleanControl plugin's output to the plugin's bypass-in port, the BooleanControl's value drives bypass automatically.

(Option 2 is new in v1; option 3 is the pre-v1 mechanism kept for backwards compatibility.)

Removal

Right-click → Remove (with confirmation), or select + Delete / Backspace. On removal:

• Confirmation dialog (cannot be undone yet, see Roadmap for the undo work).
• A→C wires through the removed plugin get auto-stitched where the channel counts match (so signal flow survives).
• Any front-panel widget binding pointing at the removed plugin marks itself "unbound".