ttheme

Character terminal palettes — every new tab takes the next one.

Ninety-five palettes drawn from Vocaloid, Evangelion, Madoka Magica, Steins;Gate, Lucky☆Star, Bocchi the Rock!, Monogatari, Sailor Moon, Serial Experiments Lain, VA-11 Hall-A, Persona 5, Undertale, Call of the Night, Higurashi, Doki Doki Literature Club, Umineko, K-On!, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Touhou Project, built for Ghostty, kitty, Alacritty, WezTerm and iTerm2, plus a zsh layer that rotates through them as you open tabs.

Two things separate this from the usual color-scheme dump:

• Every palette passes an accessibility gate. Body text at 7:1 against the background (WCAG AAA), every meaningful ANSI color at 3:1. The build fails if a palette regresses, so "it looked cute in the screenshot" cannot ship.
• Colors switch at runtime, not just at startup. Tabs get different palettes in the same window, and any tab can be repainted at any time.

Palettes

| Group | Palettes | |---|---| | Vocaloid | miku kumori rin len luka kaito meiko | | Evangelion — エヴァンゲリオン | asuka rei kaworu misato eva01 magi | | Madoka Magica — 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ | madoka homura sayaka kyoko mami nagisa kyubey | | Steins;Gate — シュタインズ・ゲート | kurisu mayuri suzuha | | Lucky☆Star — らき☆すた | konata kagami tsukasa miyuki | | Bocchi the Rock! — ぼっち・ざ・ろっく! | bocchi nijika ryo kita | | Monogatari — 〈物語〉シリーズ | hitagi shinobu tsubasa nadeko | | Sailor Moon — 美少女戦士セーラームーン | moon mercury mars jupiter venus | | Lain — serial experiments lain | lain | | VA-11 Hall-A — Cyberpunk Bartender Action | jill dorothy alma stella sei valhalla | | Persona 5 — ペルソナ5 | joker skull panther fox queen oracle velvet | | Undertale | toriel sans papyrus undyne mettaton determination | | Call of the Night — よふかしのうた | nazuna kou seri anko yofukashi | | Higurashi — ひぐらしのなく頃に | rena mion rika satoko hinamizawa | | Doki Doki Literature Club | sayori natsuki yuri monika glitch | | Umineko — うみねこのなく頃に | battler beatrice bernkastel lambdadelta rokkenjima | | K-On! — けいおん! | yui ritsu mio mugi azusa | | Cyberpunk: Edgerunners — サイバーパンク エッジランナーズ | david lucy rebecca nightcity | | Touhou Project — 東方Project | reimu marisa cirno youmu patchouli flandre | | — | neutral (default) |

neutral sits out of the rotation — it is the pre-shell default.

Backgrounds and cursors are hand-tuned; the 16 ANSI colors are borrowed from established themes (Nvim Dark, Nightfox, Oxocarbon, Selenized, Monokai Pro, Duotone, Gruvbox, Rose Pine, TokyoNight, Everforest, IR Black…) or from published character themes, picked to match each character's tones while passing the contrast gate. Each palette records where its ANSI set came from — ttheme prints it, and it is in the theme's TOML.

Install

Ghostty, kitty or Alacritty — one command, no clone:

npx @kecan0406/ttheme@latest init

It detects your terminal, asks which ones to wire, places the palettes and the zsh layer under ~/.config/ttheme, and edits your terminal config and ~/.zshrc between # ttheme begin / # ttheme end markers — everything outside the markers is left alone. Running it again updates in place; --yes skips every prompt and takes the defaults.

WezTerm and iTerm2 — one archive per terminal in the latest release:

REL=https://github.com/kecan0406/ttheme/releases/latest/download

# kitty
curl -L $REL/ttheme-kitty.tar.gz | tar xz
cp kitty/themes/miku.conf ~/.config/kitty/themes/
#   kitty.conf:  include themes/miku.conf

# alacritty
curl -L $REL/ttheme-alacritty.tar.gz | tar xz
cp alacritty/themes/miku.toml ~/.config/alacritty/themes/
#   alacritty.toml:  [general]
#                    import = ["~/.config/alacritty/themes/miku.toml"]

# wezterm
curl -L $REL/ttheme-wezterm.tar.gz | tar xz
cp wezterm/colors/miku.toml ~/.config/wezterm/colors/
#   wezterm.lua:  config.color_scheme = "miku"

# iTerm2 — import the .itermcolors under Settings > Profiles > Colors
curl -L $REL/ttheme-iterm2.tar.gz | tar xz

Each archive also carries a config/ file per theme with that theme's font — separate so you can take the colors without the rest. Ghostty is laid out differently: the dock-icon colors travel inside each theme file (they derive from the palette), and the font + shader — identical across themes — ship as one shared ttheme.conf you include once with config-file.

Building from a checkout works too: mise install && bun install && mise run build writes the same tree to dist/, and bun src/bin.ts init --link symlinks the checkout into place so palette edits land live.

Use

ttheme          list every palette, grouped, with previews
ttheme homura   pin this tab      (a unique prefix works: ttheme ho)
ttheme preview  browse live — focus repaints the tab, enter keeps it
ttheme next     advance this tab to the next palette
ttheme current  what this tab is using
ttheme help     the list above, in your terminal

In preview, groups start folded with the cursor on the current palette; ↑/↓ move (the tab repaints as the focus lands on a palette), ←/→ and space fold and unfold, page up/down and home/end jump, typing filters by substring (ctrl-u clears it), enter applies, and esc steps back — first out of the filter, then out of the preview with the original colors restored.

preview, next, current and help match exactly; every other first argument is read as a palette name, where a unique prefix is enough. Mistyped names get a "did you mean" suggestion instead of a wall of output. Piped output drops color and turns tab-separated — ttheme current prints just the name — and NO_COLOR is respected.

New tabs take the next palette in group order, with the counter shared across tabs — so opening four tabs walks you through four different characters rather than rolling the same one twice.

| Variable | Default | | |---|---|---| | TTHEME_TAB_PALETTE | seq | off makes new tabs inherit the window's colors | | TTHEME_ANNOUNCE | 1 | 0 silences the one-line notice under "Last login:" |

What each terminal can actually do

Nothing is emulated — a terminal that cannot express something simply does not get it.

| | palette file | runtime switching | font | shader | |---|---|---|---|---| | Ghostty | ✅ | ✅ native adapter | ✅ incl. per-codepoint map | ✅ | | kitty | ✅ | ✅ native adapter | family + size | ✗ | | WezTerm | ✅ | OSC — per window, never per pane | family + size | ✗ | | Alacritty | ✅ | OSC only (no runtime color API exists) | family + size | ✗ | | iTerm2 | ✅ | OSC, minus the cursor (it ignores OSC 12) | profile-only | ✗ | | anything else | — | OSC, if it speaks it | — | ✗ |

Ghostty is the only terminal here with GLSL shaders, and the only one with per-codepoint font mapping — which is why the Hangul→D2Coding rule survives only in its build.

Adding a palette

One file — copy any of themes/*.toml:

[meta]
name = "homura"        # must match the filename
group = "Madoka Magica"
native = "魔法少女まどか☆マギカ"   # optional, shown dim after the group
order = 8              # position in the rotation
ansi_source = "Monokai Pro Machine + Magica"

[colors]
background = "#1b1428"
foreground = "#f2fffc"
cursor = "#8b5cf6"
selection_background = "#322447"
ansi = [ ... 16 colors ... ]

[font] and [ghostty] are inherited from themes/_defaults.toml unless the theme overrides them. Then:

mise run build                # regenerates dist/ for all five terminals — fails on bad contrast
mise run build --only kitty   # just one terminal's subtree
mise run test

All ninety-six currently pass unwaived — magi comes closest at 7.09:1, since amber on pure black is the whole point of the NERV CRT look. If a palette genuinely has to break a rule, waive it by name and say why; a waiver without a reason fails the test suite.

[contrast]
waive = ["foreground"]     # foreground | accents | ansi0-dark | light-ansi | ansi8-visible
reason = "why this palette is the exception"

Credits

ANSI sets are adapted from published themes, credited per palette in meta.ansi_source. Shaders come from sahaj-b/ghostty-cursor-shaders (MIT), see ghostty/shaders/.

Palettes are inspired by characters from the listed works; this project is unaffiliated with and unendorsed by their rights holders. No character art, audio or trademarked asset is redistributed here — only color values.