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Introducing NKIDO

A live-coded audio engine that runs in the browser, on desktop, in Godot, and on ESP32 — now open source under MIT.

· by mlaass

NKIDO is a new open-source audio synthesis platform: a pattern-language front-end named Akkado, a graph-based DSP engine named Cedar, and a web IDE that lets you live-code both. It runs in the browser, on desktop, inside Godot games, and on the ESP32-A1S Audio Kit.

Why another audio system?

There are great live-coding environments (Strudel, TidalCycles, SuperCollider) and great DSP graphs (Pure Data, Csound). NKIDO’s bet is that these two worlds belong together in one runtime — and that the runtime should be small enough to embed anywhere, not just on a laptop.

What’s in v1

  • 95+ DSP opcodes: oscillators, filters, delays, reverbs, granular, Karplus-Strong, vocoder, bitcrusher — the usual arsenal.
  • Hot-swap with preserved state: edit while it plays, no clicks. See how it works.
  • Web IDE at live.nkido.cc: full browser-native development with WASM + AudioWorklet.
  • Godot 4.x addon: embed NKIDO in games. Install instructions.
  • ESP32 port: ~146 KB stripped binary, real-time audio on a $30 board. Build & flash guide.

Try it now

The fastest way to get a feel for NKIDO is the 5-minute Hello Sine tutorial. No install, just a browser.

What’s next

v1 is a starting point. The roadmap includes a proper docs site, a published plugin format for Cedar, MIDI + OSC bridges, and a real-time collaboration mode for the web IDE. Issues and PRs welcome on GitHub.

MIT licensed. If it’s useful to you, consider sponsoring.