I’ve been hearing about vibe coding for a while now, and it’s finally hit the audio programming world. So I decided to test it myself by building an audio plugin from scratch using Claude Code, with zero hand-written code. Here’s what worked, what didn’t, and what surprised me about my own mindset along the way.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Vibe coding hits audio programming

00:20 - My confession: I've never tried this

00:58 - About The Audio Programmer

01:31 - Choosing an LLM and getting started

02:10 - First prompt: Building a basic gain plugin

03:24 - Setting up Claude Code step by step

05:27 - Troubleshooting the install

08:47 - Creating our project and launching Claude Code

10:57 - The magic prompt: Watching it scaffold everything

13:52 - First build and test — it works!

14:39 - Inspecting the code: What did it actually write?

15:43 - Refining: Adding dB scaling and logarithmic gain

18:13 - Getting the plugin into a DAW

20:57 - Testing with real audio

21:56 - Custom UI experiment: Rotary slider and styling

23:33 - Pushing the limits: Advanced look and feel

25:29 - Where the UI broke down

27:37 - What I learned: Psychology, workflow, and honest takeaways

29:08 - What's next for this series

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Resources Mentioned:

Claude Code: https://claude.ai

JUCE Framework: https://juce.com

iPlug 2 (Oli Larkin): https://iplug2.github.io

CMake: https://cmake.org

Xcode (Mac): Available on the Mac App Store

Visual Studio (Windows): https://visualstudio.microsoft.com

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What I Used:

Claude Max planClaude Code (CLI tool)

JUCE framework (fetched via CMake)

Ableton Live (DAW testing)