Quick Start (macOS)

This guide is a concise list of steps to get started building with Conformal. For a more detailed walkthrough on building a plug-in, see the first plug-in tutorial.

Creating your first project

Install `bun`

bun is the TypeScript runtime we use for all build tooling in Conformal. Please follow installation instructions on their website

Install the VST SDK (Optional)

While the VST SDK is not required to build plug-ins, it can be usedfor validating plug-in correctness.


mkdir -p ~/SDKs && git clone https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3sdk.git ~/SDKs/vst3sdk --branch v3.8.0_build_66 --recurse-submodules

Create a new project


bun create conformal my_project

This will prompt you for a few questions to set up your project.

Setting up development environment

We have a few steps that are required to set up your development environment. The following commands should be run from the project directory.


echo "VST3_SDK_DIR=$HOME/SDKs/vst3sdk" > .env # if you installed the SDK
bun install
bun run bootstrap

Building the project


bun run package

First published on November 3, 2024

Last updated on February 21, 2026