Introduction

Stagewright is a live-performance plugin host. You wire your rig on a graph (Back panel), play it from a flat surface of knobs and buttons bound to whatever matters (Front panel), and optionally script the show logic in TypeScript (Logic panel). One desktop app, one engine process, three panels.

This is a tool aimed at the working musician who:

• runs a keyboard rig or guitar rig on stage with VST3 / AudioUnit plugins,
• wants a single screen of large controls bound to live parameters,
• wants to switch songs / variations without an audible drop,
• and does not want to rent their stage tools by the month.

If that's you, the rest of this guide gets you running in about 20 minutes.

How it's organised

• Install & first launch, what to download, what macOS will ask you for permission to do, how to point Stagewright at your plugin folders.
• Concepts, Racks, Variations, Songs, Song Parts. The model that everything else hangs off.
• The three panels, Back (Blueprint), Front (Performer), Logic (Script). One section per panel; each is reachable from the top toolbar in the app.
• Components & widgets, every kind of node you can drop on the canvas and every widget you can drop on the front panel, with what it does and what it binds to.
• Scripting, the meat. TypeScript hooks, the widget API, MIDI in / out, common patterns (AKAI MIDI Mix mute / solo lights, an expression-pedal macro, a song-driven panel layout).
• Project files, the .swproj format, racks, variations, songs, hardware abstraction.

Built to not crash

The audio engine runs as its own native process. The editor, the plugin scanner, and the engine are isolated from each other, so a misbehaving plugin or a wedged UI can't take audio down. Plugin scanning happens out of process and is cached on disk by content hash. The audio thread is never blocked on UI work or IPC.

The result: you can leave Stagewright running for a four-hour set without watching it like a hawk.

What's in Stagewright

Stagewright runs on macOS (Windows planned). See the Roadmap for what's shipped and what's next. The short version:

• Blueprint canvas, Performer view, Logic panel, all three.
• VST3 + AU plugin hosting.
• Hardware abstraction (logical control names).
• Project save / load.
• macOS (Apple Silicon + Intel). Stage tier runs at 48 kHz; Studio unlocks higher sample rates.

Required for v1.0 stable:

• Developer ID code-signing + Apple notarisation.
• Stripe checkout + licence validation (lifts the sample-rate cap).
• Windows 11 build parity (no Windows installer yet; engine and frontend compile cross-platform but haven't been tested on a real Windows rig).
• Crackle-mitigation live-rig verification.

Deferred to v1.x or v2:

• ChordPro lyrics / chord reader (mentioned on the product page; not yet in code).
• iPad / LAN web-server thin client.
• CLAP plugin format.
• Crossfade-on-rack-switch (rack switching exists; the "glitch-free" claim wants live verification).
• Rack clone + rename + UNDO.

Why "Stagewright"?

A wright is a craftsman of a particular thing: a wheelwright builds wheels, a shipwright builds ships, a playwright builds plays. A stagewright builds the stage, wires the rig, lays out the controls, writes the show logic that runs it. The tool is named after the person it's for.