Stoatworks Burrow
AI-assisted project. This codebase was created with Claude
(Anthropic), directed and reviewed by a human author. I've run the catalogue, the install
and uninstall paths, the archive guards and the privileged helper's refusals against real
release archives on macOS. Nothing has been installed into a live host through the
finished app yet. The plugin folder work is checked against temporary directories, and
the real Extra Effects folder is only ever read. The Windows privileged helper isn't
written at all. Treat it as unfinished.
An optional desktop app that installs, updates and removes the
Stoatworks plugins, tools and Companion modules.
The project page has the downloads, the user guide and the video.
It started with the twenty-five video plugins, which are the awkward ones. Most ship in
two or three formats (FFGL for Resolume, OpenFX for Resolve, Vegas, Nuke and Natron, and an
After Effects build), and installing one by hand means finding the project page, working out
which of six archives you want, unzipping it, and dragging a bundle into a folder that lives
somewhere different for every format and every platform.
It now covers the rest of the fleet the same way, under seven tabs:
| |
|---|
| Video plugins | The Resolume, Resolve and After Effects effects you load into a host. |
| Video tools | The applications you launch, and the Companion modules that drive them. |
| Audio | VST3 and Audio Unit plugins, and the audio tools that run on their own. |
| Networking & Infrastructure | The tools that move signals around a network and keep a rack running. |
| PowerPoint | Add-ins that work inside PowerPoint, on the open deck. |
| Self-hosted | The things you run rather than install: the services that ship as containers, and the browser tools. |
| Device firmware | CANary firmware written over its own USB port, a BirdDog PLAY restored from its factory image, and the PLAY's update packages. See below. |
A browser tool has nothing to install, so its row offers Open (the copy on the
website), Source, and, where the project ships a docker-compose.yml, Run your
own, which shows it with Copy and Save buttons. Every one with a compose file also
has an Unraid Community Applications template, in
stoatworks-unraid.
Applications get copied out of their disk image, and every tool that has a
Bitfocus Companion module offers it on the same
row. Companion's own developer modules folder is just another destination.
A PowerPoint add-in has no code to install at all: it runs from its own website inside
PowerPoint. What Burrow puts on the machine is the add-in's manifest, the small file that
tells PowerPoint where to find it, and it puts it exactly where the add-in's own installer
would (PowerPoint's add-in folder on a Mac, a per-user folder and a registry entry on
Windows). It recognises the add-in by the ID inside that file, so one you installed with
the add-in's own installer shows up as installed too. PowerPoint only notices when it
starts, so quit and reopen it afterwards. On a Mac the add-in then lives under
Home ▸ Add-ins, under Developer Add-ins.
Burrow is one searchable list instead of all that faff.
Video: What it does, in 43 seconds
These are screenshots of the app itself, with the plugin names, versions and release notes
from the catalogue that ships inside it. What's shown as installed is staged with
scripts/screenshot.sh, because several of these states are
awkward to produce on demand, and one of them is a cancelled password prompt.
- What's new: release notes for updates you could take, and plugins you
haven't seen.
- Video plugins · Video tools · Audio · Networking & Infrastructure · PowerPoint: everything in
that part of the fleet, under Update available, Version unknown, Up to date and
Not installed, with per-format state on each row, and how far along each project is
(Field proven, Field testing, Stable, Released, Beta, In development) in
the same words the website uses.
- Settings: what to install by default, which you can override per item, and
where each one goes.
Each plugin's video is the picture at the left of its row. Click it and it plays in the
window, streamed from the project's own GitHub release rather than embedded from YouTube,
so there are no cookies or ads and no third party involved. The stills ship with the app,
so the list works offline and nothing's fetched until you press play.
Previous versions… on any row rolls a plugin back to an earlier release,
which is handy when something starts misbehaving in the middle of show week.
There are two refresh controls, because they do different jobs. Rescan installed
re-reads your plugin folders without touching the network, and Check for updates
fetches the plugin list. Both tell you what they actually changed.
Every plugin's browser demo is built in: press Try demo and it runs locally,
offline, from an address only this app knows.
No account, and nothing phoned home
There's no sign-in, because there's nothing to sign in to.
Burrow fetches one file, the plugin list at stoatworks-labs.com/catalog.json, and
downloads plugin archives and project videos from GitHub. That's the whole of its network
use. It doesn't send an identifier, a list of what you've installed, or any usage data. The
demos are served with no permission to make network requests at all.
Project videos stream from GitHub too, and only when you press play. The stills are
bundled, so the list itself fetches nothing.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
