duskbox

A calm theme family with tiered attention for Neovim, VS Code (and forks: Cursor, VSCodium, Windsurf…), Ghostty/cmux, and lazygit. Sixteen variants — eight core moods (light → dark plus high-contrast and a neon "cyber" option), with dusk and cyber each also in four signature flavors — all generated from one OKLCH source of truth, so editors and terminals never drift. Richly detailed (graded Markdown headings, per-language tokens, calm punctuation, deep LSP semantics), and each core mood carries its own atmosphere, while signature variants stand on their base's slate stage with a whisper of their signature in the room — plus designed diagnostics, diffs, and an accent cursor. (Neovim bonus: TODO/FIXME comment badges via the treesitter comment parser — :TSInstall comment if your distro doesn't bundle it.)

Warm declarations, cool literals, bold keywords & types for legibility. Calm by default; punchy where you want it (hello, cyber).

Designed in OKLCH around tiered attention: deep ember keywords command (electric-blue modifiers at their side), the warm + cool work spine carries meaning, and structure recedes into each variant's own background material. In the signature variants, the chrome — cursor, borders, selection, markdown headings, statusline — takes the signature color while the syntax stays consistent across the family.

dusk and cyber also come in four signature flavors — the chrome (cursor, borders, selection, headings, statusline) takes the signature color — and the stage carries a 2% signature whisper while syntax stays consistent across the family:

Real VS Code renders (React/TSX) of every variant are collected in the full screenshot gallery.

The gallery is produced by the lab, which runs code-server locally and captures the actual VS Code workbench with Playwright.

The eight core variants:

With lazy.nvim:

{
  "ih-hugh/duskbox",
  lazy = false,
  priority = 1000,
  config = function()
    require("duskbox").setup({ variant = "dusk", bold = true, transparent = false })
    vim.cmd.colorscheme("duskbox-dusk")
  end,
}

Switch variants anytime with :colorscheme duskbox-<variant> (e.g. :colorscheme duskbox-cyber).

setup options:

• VS Code: install Duskbox from the Marketplace, then Preferences: Color Theme and pick a Duskbox variant.
• Forks (Cursor, VSCodium, Windsurf…): install Duskbox from Open VSX, or download the .vsix from Releases and run code --install-extension duskbox.vsix (or your fork's equivalent CLI).

duskbox ships a matching lazygit theme for every variant under extras/lazygit/.

• From inside Neovim (recommended, zero setup): LazyVim/Snacks auto-generate a lazygit theme from your active colorscheme, so <leader>gg already matches whichever duskbox variant is loaded.

• Standalone lazygit: append a variant's gui.theme block to your lazygit config (~/Library/Application Support/lazygit/config.yml on macOS, else ~/.config/lazygit/config.yml):

  curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ih-hugh/duskbox/main/extras/lazygit/duskbox-dusk.yml \
    >> "$(lazygit --print-config-dir)/config.yml"

duskbox ships Ghostty-compatible terminal themes for every variant under extras/ghostty/. cmux uses Ghostty's theme system, so the same files work there too.

Option 1 — cmux theme picker (recommended):

brew tap ih-hugh/tap
brew install cmux-theme-picker
# Then run:
cmux-theme-picker            # pick a theme
cmux-theme-picker --update   # refresh duskbox themes after a release

The picker shows live previews and lets you toggle between light/dark slots with Tab. Duskbox themes are marked with ★. See cmux-theme-picker for details.

Option 2 — Manual install:

# Ghostty
mkdir -p ~/.config/ghostty/themes
cp extras/ghostty/duskbox-* ~/.config/ghostty/themes/

# cmux (current cmux does not list symlinked user themes, so copy real files)
mkdir -p "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.cmuxterm.app/themes"
cp extras/ghostty/duskbox-* "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.cmuxterm.app/themes/"

Set a variant directly:

cmux themes set --light duskbox-day --dark duskbox-dusk
cmux reload-config

Or edit your Ghostty config and reload:

theme = duskbox-dusk

pnpm install
pnpm build      # regenerate colors/*.lua, lua/duskbox/themes/*.lua, themes/*.json, extras/*
pnpm test       # vitest: OKLCH math, contrast gates, emitters, determinism
pnpm gallery    # regenerate docs/img/*.svg

Everything is generated from src/: palettes are authored in OKLCH (src/palette/variants.ts) and a shared semantic token map (src/tokens.ts) defines the identity. Edit those, run pnpm build, and both editors update from the single source.

A real VS Code (code-server) on localhost for rendering-true theme validation:

# terminal 1
lab/up.sh                 # build + package + install the local VSIX, serve on :8089

# terminal 2
cd lab && npm i           # once
npm run shoot             # screenshot all 16 variants x fixtures -> lab/shots/
DUSKBOX_LAB_DOCS=1 npm run shoot  # refresh docs/img/shots/<variant>.png from sample.tsx
npm run shoot -- Dusk     # or specific variants

Real workbench, real TextMate + semantic tokens — what the marketplace ships is what gets screenshotted. Agents read the PNGs to validate changes before release.

duskbox is designed in OKLCH (a perceptually-uniform color space) around tiered attention: hierarchy comes from lightness × chroma, identity from hue. Deep ember keywords command; the work sits in a warm (gold/orange) + cool (green/teal/blue) spine with bright-lavender variables; punctuation is carved from each variant's own background material and recedes. High-contrast variants get their hierarchy from chroma alone (≥7:1 floors). Every accent is gated on WCAG contrast in the test suite — and a pink-regression gate keeps washed-pink and fuchsia out of syntax permanently. Keywords are stratified: command keywords (if, return, function, class) stay ember bold while modifiers (async, const, static, extends) recede to electric-blue italics — async function main reads as three colors, not one. On the salmon variants, import/export ride a vivid true salmon.

MIT © Hugo (ih-hugh)