2026.06.23.15.53.09.2.mp4

got tired of hand-porting my theme to every single tool, so i made little theme engine - tweet

monotheme

Warning

Alpha. monotheme is early and evolving — APIs, adapters and theme output may change without notice. Expect rough edges; issues and PRs welcome.

One source of truth — a standard editor theme (the colors + tokenColors JSON that VSCode, Cursor, Zed and shiki all read) — projected into every tool's native format, switched with a single command that live-reloads running apps.

Drop in any such theme (Shades of Purple, GitHub, Catppuccin, Tokyo Night, …) and your whole terminal/editor/OS follows. No per-tool hand-porting.

The tokenColors half is plain TextMate scopes (same model as a .tmTheme); the colors half adds the UI + terminal.ansi* keys a .tmTheme lacks — which is exactly what lets one file drive your terminal, btop and tmux as well as syntax.

theme set shades-of-purple

That one command reskins your terminal, multiplexer, editors, git UI, file manager, system accent — live, no restarts.

Why

Most theming tools use a small palette (16–24 colors) as the source of truth. Great for terminals, lossy for syntax highlighting — a theme's ~140 TextMate scopes collapse into ~16 buckets and everything subtly loses its identity.

monotheme keeps the fat format (the full VSCode theme) as canonical, and:

• projects down to 16-color ANSI for dumb tools (terminals, btop, fzf, …)
• passes through at full fidelity for smart ones (bat, editors, anything that reads a TextMate/shiki theme)

You can always collapse rich → simple, never the reverse. The syntax projection is a faithful port of the vscode-textmate theme matcher, verified token-for-token against shiki (the highlighter Cursor/VSCode use) so colors match what you'd see in the editor.

Supported tools

Surface	Tools
Terminals	ghostty, kitty, alacritty, WezTerm, Warp — any 16-ANSI terminal
Multiplexers / TUI	tmux, btop, fzf, yazi, lazygit
Editors	VSCode, Cursor, Zed, Neovim, Sublime Text (chrome + TextMate syntax)
Agents / dev	opencode, Claude Code, hunk, tuicr, herdr
Syntax export	.tmTheme (bat/Sublime), shiki JSON, base16
macOS / extras	system accent color, window borders (JankyBorders, rift), Raycast

Each target detects whether the tool is present and no-ops if not, so you only theme what you have.

Install

Requires Bun.

git clone https://github.com/eduwass/monotheme
cd monotheme
bun install
bun link          # exposes the `theme` command on your PATH
theme list

bun link registers the theme (and monotheme) command into Bun's global bin dir. Prefer not to link? Run it directly: bun src/cli.ts list. See docs/INSTALL.md for per-tool wiring and theme init.

Usage

theme list                 # installed + bundled themes
theme set <name>           # project a theme to every tool + live-reload
theme current              # the active theme
theme init                 # re-apply the active theme (run from your shell rc)
theme sync                 # vendor every installed editor theme into the config home
theme browse "<query>"     # search the VS Code Marketplace for themes
theme add <publisher.ext>  # download + vendor a Marketplace theme extension
theme preview [<name>]     # render a code-sample preview card (SVG) for a theme
theme raycast              # open the active theme as a Raycast import (macOS)
theme check                # self-check, no writes

System light/dark switching (macOS)

Pick a theme for each appearance, and monotheme follows the OS — whether you toggle it by hand or the schedule flips it at sunset:

theme pair set github-light tokyo-night   # light theme, dark theme
theme watch install                       # launchd agent: switches within ~2s of the flip
theme auto                                # one-shot: apply whichever half matches right now
theme watch status|uninstall              # inspect / remove the agent

Themes resolve from bundled defaults, your installed editor extensions (it discovers Cursor/VSCode themes on disk — including each editor's built-in themes like Dark Modern / Monokai), and ~/.config/monotheme/themes/ (vendored + custom). theme browse / theme add pull any theme from the VS Code Marketplace on demand.

All runtime state lives in ~/.config/monotheme/ (active theme, vendored themes, fonts.json) — decoupled from the clone.

Fonts

An orthogonal font axis, opt-in via ~/.config/monotheme/fonts.json. Set one font everywhere, or override per surface (editor / terminal / ui). mono is the inherited base.

theme font set "<font>" [size]         # set the font everywhere (the mono base)
theme font set editor "<font>" [size]  # override one surface: editor|terminal|ui
theme font show                        # current resolved fonts
theme font catalog [--nerd]            # ~200 curated programming fonts (Nerd-Font-aware)
theme font install <id>                # install a font (Homebrew cask, or nerd-fonts .tar.xz)

The catalog reuses the open-source programmingfonts + nerd-fonts databases, so <font> can be a catalog id (jetbrains-mono) or a family name. The Nerd Font variant is preferred automatically when installed — install it for terminal/editor so prompts and file-explorer glyphs render.

Font targets: ghostty, kitty, alacritty (terminal); VSCode, Cursor, Zed, Sublime (editor/ui). TUIs inherit the terminal font. ghostty needs a one-time include — add config-file = monotheme-fonts to ~/.config/ghostty/config, after any existing font-family line (ghostty's font-family is additive, so the include must come later to win).

Cross-machine sync (optional)

Set THEME_PEER=<ssh-host> and every theme set mirrors the switch to that machine, so all tools on both stay on the same theme. For non-SSH transports, set THEME_PEER_CMD='mytool run {}' ( {} is replaced with the remote command).

How it works

load parses the VSCode theme → project derives a normalized palette (bg, fg, ANSI 16, accents, …) and resolveToken resolves any TextMate scope to its color via the ported matcher → each adapter renders that into one tool's format → targets write the file to the right place and reload the running app.

Adding a tool

Adapters are small and self-contained — one file per tool. Two places to put one:

• src/targets/ (in the repo) — for tools worth shipping to everyone. PRs welcome.
• ~/.config/monotheme/targets/ (your config dir) — personal adapters, no repo checkout needed. Export a plain object; same-name overrides a built-in; a broken file warns and is skipped. Perfect for sketchybar, waybar, a personal dashboard, …

See docs/ADAPTERS.md for the contract and a step-by-step walkthrough. If you theme a tool, others get it for free.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.