A Neovim colorscheme inspired by deep ocean water — five colors drawn from the sea's amber bioluminescence, sea foam, midnight navy, and the shifting blues between shallow and abyss. Ships dark (oshen-night) and light (oshen-day) variants, with first-class support for transparent terminals, and built to stay out of the way while you work.

Named after shenfiles, my personal dotfiles.

• Neovim >= 0.9
• A terminal with termguicolors support
• JetBrainsMono Nerd Font (recommended)

{
  "54L1M/Oshen.nvim",
  lazy = false,
  priority = 1000,
  config = function()
    require("oshen").setup({
      transparent = true, -- set false for opaque background
    })
    vim.cmd.colorscheme("oshen-night") -- or "oshen-day" for light
  end,
}

[plugins]
"Oshen.nvim" = "scm"

require("oshen").setup({
  -- Remove all background colors so your terminal wallpaper shows through.
  -- Pairs well with ghostty's background-opacity setting.
  transparent = false, -- default
})

Oshen ships both a dark and a light palette as two colorscheme variants. Each sets Neovim's background option for you, and Oshen re-applies itself automatically whenever background changes. Pick one in your config:

vim.cmd.colorscheme("oshen-night")  -- dark
vim.cmd.colorscheme("oshen-day")    -- light

Toggle at runtime — the colorscheme updates live:

:set background=light
:set background=dark

Both variants (oshen-day, oshen-night) appear as separate, previewable entries in colorscheme pickers like fzf-lua and Telescope.

Note: transparent is a dark-mode feature. The light palette depends on its solid backgrounds, so transparency is automatically disabled when background=light.

• Transparent background support — your wallpaper shows through everywhere
• Treesitter semantic highlight groups
• LSP diagnostics and semantic tokens
• Modular architecture — groups and integrations are isolated files, easy to extend
• JetBrainsMono Nerd Font glyph-aware

Source colors

The entire scheme is derived from five source colors. Nothing more.

Role	Hex	Preview
Keywords / Numbers	#ffb703
Foreground	#f1faee
Functions	#abdadc
Borders / Accents	#457b9d
Selection / UI	#1d3567

Full palette

Backgrounds

Name	Hex	Preview	Usage
crust	#060810		Deepest background, extreme fills
mantle	#090c12		Panels, popups, sidebars
base	#0e1117		Main editor background

Surfaces

Name	Hex	Preview	Usage
surface0	#131c2b		Cursorline, word highlights
surface1	#1e2d42		Raised UI (TreesitterContext, etc.)
surface2	#2a3f58		Hover states, picker selections

Overlays

Name	Hex	Preview	Usage
overlay0	#3d5570		Invisible guides, whitespace chars
overlay1	#526d82		Comments, inactive line numbers
overlay2	#6a8599		Operators, punctuation, conceal

Text tiers

Name	Hex	Preview	Usage
subtext0	#8899aa		Secondary info, statusline text
subtext1	#b0c4d8		Brighter secondary, parameters
text	#f1faee		Main foreground

Accents

Name	Hex	Preview	Usage
amber	#ffb703		Keywords, numbers, cursor
peach	#e8944a		Warnings, orange tokens
green	#a8c97f		Strings, git added
sky	#7ab8d4		String escapes, special punctuation
teal	#abdadc		Functions, info diagnostics
steel	#457b9d		Borders, accents
lavender	#c3a0d8		Types, hints, constructors
red	#e05c6e		Errors, git deleted
navy	#1d3567		Visual selection, deep UI chrome

A built-in lualine theme is included. The b and c sections use NONE background so they blend into a transparent terminal.

require("lualine").setup({
  options = {
    theme = require("oshen.integrations.lualine").get(),
    section_separators = "",
    component_separators = "",
  },
})

Mode colors:

Mode	Hex	Name	Preview
NORMAL	#abdadc	teal
INSERT	#a8c97f	green
VISUAL	#c3a0d8	lavender
COMMAND	#ffb703	amber
REPLACE	#e05c6e	red

lua/oshen/
├── init.lua                   public API (setup / load / get_palette)
├── palette.lua                all color definitions
├── highlights.lua             thin orchestrator — loads groups + integrations
├── groups/
│   ├── editor.lua             core editor UI
│   ├── syntax.lua             legacy vim syntax groups
│   ├── treesitter.lua         @capture groups
│   ├── lsp.lua                LSP diagnostics
│   ├── semantic_tokens.lua    @lsp.type.* and @lsp.mod.*
│   └── terminal.lua           vim.g.terminal_color_N
└── integrations/
    ├── lualine.lua
    ├── gitsigns.lua
    ├── illuminate.lua
    ├── blink.lua
    ├── oil.lua
    ├── snacks.lua
    ├── whichkey.lua
    ├── ufo.lua
    ├── render_markdown.lua
    ├── todo_comments.lua
    ├── treesitter_context.lua
    ├── dap.lua
    ├── harpoon.lua
    ├── mini.lua
    └── tiny_inline_diagnostic.lua

Create lua/oshen/integrations/myplugin.lua following this pattern:

local M = {}

local function hi(group, opts)
  vim.api.nvim_set_hl(0, group, opts)
end

function M.apply(p, transparent)
  hi("MyPluginNormal", { fg = p.text, bg = transparent and p.none or p.mantle })
end

return M

Then add "oshen.integrations.myplugin" to the integrations list in highlights.lua.

Other plugins or your own config can read the full color table:

local p = require("oshen").get_palette()

-- Example: custom indent-blankline colors
vim.api.nvim_set_hl(0, "IblIndent", { fg = p.overlay0 })
vim.api.nvim_set_hl(0, "IblScope",  { fg = p.overlay2 })

A matching Ghostty config and tmux palette are included in shenfiles.

Ghostty settings used with this theme:

background-opacity = 0.65
font-family = "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Mono"

Issues and PRs are welcome — especially for plugin integrations not listed above.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup instructions, the integration pattern, commit style, and PR guidelines.

MIT