Themes

The yottacode TUI ships with eleven built-in color palettes. Switch between them with /theme — an interactive picker with a live preview pane — or pin one in ~/.yottacode/config.toml so every new session boots into it.

The picker

/theme opens a two-pane overlay. Theme names live on the left; the right pane shows a live showcase rendered in the highlighted palette — inline tokens, a chroma-highlighted code block, a diff fragment, and status / state markers.

Key	Effect
`↑` / `↓` (also `j` / `k`)	Move the cursor; the highlighted theme is live-applied to the whole TUI so you see the new look across the entire surface, not just the preview pane.
`Home` / `End`	Jump to the first / last theme.
`Enter`	Commit the highlighted theme and persist it to `~/.yottacode/config.toml`.
`Esc`	Cancel — revert to the theme that was active when the picker opened. Navigation is non-destructive.

The cursor opens on the currently-active theme. The green ❯ arrow stays green across every palette so the “you are here” cue doesn’t shift color when you preview a theme.

Scriptable shortcuts

For muscle memory or non-interactive callers (e.g. one-shot mode), two forms bypass the picker:

/theme set <name>      # explicit
/theme <name>          # positional shortcut, same effect

Both apply, persist, and report [theme] switched to "<name>" (persisted).

Built-in palettes

Order matches what the picker displays: terminal leads (the universal-safe and default pick), then alphabetical.

Name	Description	Chroma style
`terminal` (default)	The main-branch look — adaptive colors that respect your terminal background. Foreground colors are spelled as `AdaptiveColor` light/dark pairs (dark text on a light terminal, light text on a dark terminal); the ✓ success dot stays on ANSI green (2/10) so it matches your terminal palette exactly. The “what yottacode looked like before themes” theme.	terminal default (`monokai`)
`catppuccin`	Catppuccin Mocha — pastel lavender, peach, and teal on warm dark. The most-requested community theme of the last few years.	`catppuccin-mocha`
`dimmed`	GitHub Dark Dimmed — soft graphite slate (`#22272e`) with muted blue/green accents on a `#adbac7` foreground. GitHub’s own “easier on the eyes” alternative to full dark mode. The backdrop paints chrome surfaces (palette overlay, approval modal, watermark box) so the theme identity is visible; fenced code blocks intentionally do not pick up the backdrop, so chroma syntax highlighting stays clean.	`github-dark`
`gruvbox`	Warm retro — burnt orange, mustard yellow, and sage green on dark brown. The popular Vim colorscheme.	`gruvbox`
`high-contrast`	Maximum legibility — bright primaries on a transparent background, no mid-greys. Designed for low-vision and bright-room terminals.	`github-high-contrast`
`low-contrast`	The deliberate inverse of `high-contrast` — every role pulled toward mid-grey so the entire surface sits in a narrow tonal band and nothing pops. State colors carry a faint hue cast (cool / green / amber / rose) but stay desaturated and tonally close to body text. A “calm” reading surface for long ambient sessions; not the right pick if you need errors to be loud.	`github`
`no-color`	Monochrome — every role renders as default terminal foreground. Even fenced code blocks render in B&W. Useful for piping to tools that don’t strip ANSI, or for users who prefer a flat surface.	`bw`
`nord`	Arctic Ice Studio’s cool blue-grey — restrained northern tones, minimal saturation.	`nord`
`one-dark`	Atom’s classic slate with cool blue, green, and a distinctive coral red. The “default dark” muscle memory for a large slice of devs.	`onedark`
`solarized-dark`	Ethan Schoonover’s classic — deliberate Lab* tones, blue base, amber/violet accents.	`solarized-dark`
`tokyo-night`	Deep navy with vivid blue, purple, and cyan. More saturated than Nord while staying cool; very popular in the Neovim community.	`tokyonight-night`

Why there’s no true “light” theme

yottacode is an inline TUI — it preserves your terminal scrollback rather than taking over an alternate screen. lipgloss styles only paint behind text they render, not behind the whole viewport, so a theme can’t make a dark terminal look like a light one. The dimmed theme works around this for chrome surfaces (palette overlay, approval modal) only.

If you want the full light experience, run yottacode in a terminal whose background is light. For “softer than dark, regardless of terminal,” use low-contrast.

Persistence

The picker’s Enter (or /theme set <name>) writes:

[theme]
name = "dimmed"

to ~/.yottacode/config.toml. The default theme (terminal) is not persisted — omitting the section keeps the file minimal for users who never touched the command.

A typo in the persisted name is rejected at load time:

config: ~/.yottacode/config.toml: theme.name = "termnal" is not a registered theme (try one of terminal, catppuccin, dimmed, gruvbox, high-contrast, low-contrast, no-color, nord, one-dark, solarized-dark, tokyo-night)

Adding a theme (for contributors)

Drop an internal/tui/themes/<name>.go file with a single init() that calls register(Palette{ Name: …, Description: …, Highlight: …, Accent: …, …}). The TUI’s styles.go builds every UI style from those role colors; nothing else needs editing for the new theme to surface in the picker. Tests in themes_test.go assert the registered set — append the new name to expectedThemes in the right slot (head pins terminal first; the tail is alphabetical) so the registry-coverage test stays accurate.

Lock the theme contract:

Every role must be filled. styles.go reads all ten role fields; an unset lipgloss.AdaptiveColor{} renders as default-foreground (effectively invisible against the terminal background) and looks like a bug.
HasBackground = true is opt-in. Only set it when you want chrome surfaces (palette overlay, approval modal, watermark box) painted with your Background color. Code blocks are intentionally exempted to preserve chroma syntax highlighting; most themes leave HasBackground zero so the user’s terminal background shows through.
Highlight is the chroma style name. Pair it deliberately — a light UI palette with monokai reads as broken; a dark UI with github washes out fenced code.
Pin vs. adapt. Use pin(...) when the theme’s identity is “this exact look on every terminal” (Catppuccin, Gruvbox, Solarized). Use lipgloss.AdaptiveColor{Light: …, Dark: …} when the theme should respond to terminal background detection (low-contrast).

TUI slash commands Security and allow lists