Hi everyone,
I’ve been building Illustrator plugins and ran into the same wall a lot of people here have — UXP isn’t available for Illustrator, CEP is stuck in 2013, and ExtendScript is painful to scale. So
I built something different.
NUXP is an open source framework that bypasses CEP and ExtendScript entirely. A C++ plugin embeds an HTTP server inside Illustrator, and you build your frontend in TypeScript with whatever
framework you want (Vue, React, Svelte, etc.). A code generator parses the Illustrator SDK headers with tree-sitter and auto-generates typed bindings for 400+ functions across 19 SDK suites —
so you get direct SDK access without writing C++ yourself.
Some things that might interest this community:
- No ExtendScript — your entire codebase is TypeScript with proper types
- Hot reload during development — no restarting Illustrator every time you change something
- Mock mode — build and test your UI without Illustrator running
- SSE events — real-time notifications when documents change, selection updates, etc.
- Custom route system — define endpoints in JSON, get typed TypeScript clients generated automatically
It’s designed as a skeleton you clone and build on. macOS only for now, MIT licensed.
GitHub: GitHub - ByteBard97/nuxp: No UXP? No problem. Build native Illustrator plugins with modern web frameworks and the C++ SDK.
Docs: Home | NUXP Documentation
Architecture deep dive: Architecture | NUXP Documentation
Would love to hear from anyone working on Illustrator tooling. Contributions welcome — especially Windows support if anyone wants to take that on.