validate-pluginval

A validator for VST3 and AudioUnit audio plugins. Audio plugins are software instruments and effects used inside music applications; VST3 and AudioUnit are two plugin formats.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to validate .vst3 or .component files at a chosen strictness level on macOS, Windows, or Linux where supported.
Why use it?
It checks whether a built plugin behaves correctly and can reveal problems before users load it in an audio application. It does not support CLAP plugins.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/iplug3/audio-plugin-dev-skills/validate-pluginval
Any agent
npx skills add iPlug3/audio-plugin-dev-skills --skill validate-pluginval
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/iPlug3/audio-plugin-dev-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 75 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,529 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00075 $0.01529
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00764
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00306
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00153

Measured 2d ago against content hash ed90f3b201f4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

validate-pluginval scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/audio-plugin-validators/skills/validate-pluginval/SKILL.md · 195 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 195 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

pluginval

Cross-platform validator for VST3 and AudioUnit plugins.

Plugin Install Locations

pluginval accepts a direct path. These are the standard install locations by format.

AudioUnit (.component) — macOS only:

Location Scope
~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/ Current user only
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/ All users

VST3 (.vst3):

Platform User Location System Location
macOS ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/ /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/
Windows %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Common\VST3\ C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\
Linux ~/.vst3/ /usr/lib/vst3/ or /usr/local/lib/vst3/

Instructions

  1. Install pluginval (see Installation below)
  2. Locate the built plugin (.vst3 or .component) in your build output directory or one of the standard locations above
  3. Run at strictness level 5 (recommended minimum):
    • macOS: /Applications/pluginval.app/Contents/MacOS/pluginval --strictness-level 5 /path/to/plugin
    • Windows: pluginval.exe --strictness-level 5 "C:\path\to\plugin.vst3"
    • Linux: pluginval --strictness-level 5 /path/to/plugin.vst3
  4. If it crashes on a multi-bus VST3, use validate-vst3 instead
  5. For CI, add --skip-gui-tests for headless environments

Installation

Download from GitHub Releases.

Platform Setup
macOS Extract and move pluginval.app to /Applications/
Windows Extract pluginval.exe and add to PATH or use full path
Linux Extract pluginval binary, chmod +x, place in /usr/local/bin/

Verify installation:

# macOS
/Applications/pluginval.app/Contents/MacOS/pluginval --help

# Windows
pluginval.exe --help

# Linux
pluginval --help

Basic Usage

# macOS
/Applications/pluginval.app/Contents/MacOS/pluginval --strictness-level 5 /path/to/plugin

# Windows
pluginval.exe --strictness-level 5 "C:\path\to\plugin.vst3"

# Linux
pluginval --strictness-level 5 /path/to/plugin.vst3

Read the full file on GitHub · 195 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 195 lines · 75 tokens per session scan A ed90f3b201f4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

validate-pluginval is a skill published in the GitHub repository iPlug3/audio-plugin-dev-skills (88 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 75 tokens to every session and 1,529 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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