ColorLoom

A powerful Rust CLI tool for generating consistent color themes across multiple editors and terminals from a single TOML configuration file.

Overview

ColorLoom is the theme generation engine behind Subliminal Nightfall. It reads a centralized theme.toml configuration and generates native theme files for:

• Zed - Full theme JSON with opaque, hazy, and cloudy variants
• VS Code / Cursor - Color theme JSON with comprehensive UI coverage
• Neovim - Lua colorscheme with highlight groups
• Ghostty - Terminal palette configuration
• Website - JSON palette for web showcase

Features

• Single Source of Truth: Define colors once in theme.toml, generate everywhere
• Variant Support: Automatically generates base, hazy (75% opacity), and cloudy (90% opacity) theme variants
• Blur Effects: Full support for Zed's background.appearance: "blurred" with proper transparency
• Comprehensive Coverage: Generates 100+ color settings per target for complete UI theming
• Type-Safe: Written in Rust with full serde serialization

Installation

# From crates.io (when published)
cargo install colorloom

# From source
cd tools/colorloom
cargo install --path .

Usage

# Generate all themes (default command)
colorloom generate

# Validate configuration
colorloom validate

# List targets and variants
colorloom list

# Use custom config file
colorloom -c custom-theme.toml generate

Configuration

ColorLoom reads from theme.toml in the current directory:

version = "1"

[meta]
name = "Subliminal Nightfall"
author = "Michael Hamrah"
description = "A dark color scheme with purple-black backgrounds"
license = "MIT"

# ANSI terminal colors with base/bright/dim variants
[palette.base.ansi.red]
base = "#bf616a"
bright = "#e2848d"
dim = "#85434a"

[palette.base.ansi.green]
base = "#a9cfa4"
bright = "#ccf2c7"
dim = "#769072"

# ... more ANSI colors

# Syntax highlighting colors
[palette.syntax]
teal = "#9ccfd8"
blue_green = "#6699cc"
lavender = "#c4a7e7"
gray = "#7f7f7f"

# UI colors
[palette.ui]
background = "#191724"
background_alt = "#1f1d2e"
background_elevated = "#26233a"
foreground = "#e0def4"
foreground_muted = "#a0a0a0"
foreground_dim = "#7f7f7f"
selection = "#484e5b"
cursor = "#5fb3b3"
line_highlight = "#2e3239bf"

# Border colors
[palette.border]
border = "#484e5b"
border_variant = "#363b45"
border_focused = "#6699cc"
border_selected = "#5fb3b3"

# Theme variants
[[variants]]
name = "base"
alpha = 1.0

[[variants]]
name = "hazy"
alpha = 0.75
blur_radius = 20

[[variants]]
name = "cloudy"
alpha = 0.90
blur_radius = 12

# Target configurations
[[targets]]
id = "zed"
enabled = true
path = "zed/themes"
out_file = "subliminal-nightfall.json"

[[targets]]
id = "cursor"
enabled = true
path = "cursor/themes"
out_names = { base = "subliminal-nightfall-color-theme.json", hazy = "subliminal-nightfall-color-theme-hazy.json", cloudy = "subliminal-nightfall-color-theme-cloudy.json" }

[[targets]]
id = "neovim"
enabled = true
path = "neovim/colors"
out_names = { base = "subliminal-nightfall.lua", hazy = "subliminal-nightfall-hazy.lua", cloudy = "subliminal-nightfall-cloudy.lua" }

[[targets]]
id = "ghostty"
enabled = true
path = "ghostty"
out_names = { base = "subliminal-nightfall", hazy = "subliminal-nightfall-hazy", cloudy = "subliminal-nightfall-cloudy" }

[[targets]]
id = "website"
enabled = true
path = "website/src/data"
out_file = "palette.json"

Transparency & Blur

ColorLoom automatically handles transparency for blur-enabled variants:

For blurred variants:

• Editor and gutter backgrounds are fully transparent (00) to show blur
• Surfaces and panels use variant alpha for layering
• Tabs and toolbars use reduced opacity for subtle differentiation

Supported Targets

Zed

Generates a single JSON file containing all variants with:

• background.appearance: "blurred" for transparent variants
• Complete syntax highlighting
• Panel, tab bar, status bar, terminal colors
• Git decoration colors
• Player colors for collaboration

VS Code / Cursor

Generates separate JSON files per variant with:

• 100+ workbench colors
• Token colors for syntax
• Semantic highlighting support
• Git and diff colors

Neovim

Generates Lua colorscheme files with:

• Highlight group definitions
• Terminal colors
• TreeSitter support ready

Ghostty

Generates palette files with:

• 16-color ANSI palette
• Background/foreground
• Selection colors
• Cursor colors

Development

# Build
cargo build --release

# Run tests
cargo test

# Check formatting
cargo fmt --check

# Lint
cargo clippy

Architecture

colorloom/
├── src/
│   ├── main.rs      # CLI entry point
│   ├── config.rs    # TOML configuration types
│   └── targets.rs   # Theme generators per target
├── Cargo.toml
└── README.md

License

MIT License - see the main repository for details.

Links

• Documentation: subliminal-nightfall.hamrah.com/colorloom
• Main Repository: github.com/mhamrah/subliminal-nightfall
• Theme Website: subliminal-nightfall.hamrah.com
• crates.io: crates.io/crates/colorloom