SPEC 003 AFTERIMAGE / DARK
#4EF08A #8FF0B4 #C8F05E #62D4C8 #F0C84E #E8945E #D8E8D8 #7F9A85 flagship - the palette this site runs on. CRT heritage: near-monochrome greens with amber and orange reserved for warnings.
// our palettes, in your editor - free
The theme family
Seven original palettes for VS Code, Neovim, Helix, Zed and four terminals. Made from the same love of code and color as our poster artwork. The site runs on this family too: try a palette below, then take it into your editor. Free, with no email signup.
SPEC 000 SPECTRUM / DARK
#2EE08E #29D6E0 #4D8FF2 #9A7CF5 #E069C0 #F05A4D #F0952E #ECC832 The crowd-pleaser: a full-hue daily-driver, green-first and saturated well past the muted-pastel zone where One Dark and Nightfox live.
SPEC 004 WARMBOOT / DARK
#EDA03A #E07850 #D4C05A #B8874A #A8798F #7F99A8 #F0DED2 #96825F Amber-glass warmth: golds and rusts with dusty plum and steel blue carrying the cool roles, on an espresso ground.
SPEC 005 OVERPRINT / DARK
#35C8E8 #E858A8 #E8D44E #7A7AE8 #58D888 #E87A58 #E8E8EA #83879C The press palette: pure C, M, Y as primaries with their two-ink mixes as secondaries, on key black.
SPEC 006 PUNCHCARD / LIGHT
#9E2B45 #9C5B23 #8A7D2E #4A7A3A #1F6878 #2B4A8C #6D3D80 #5A5142 The light theme: manila card stock and vintage ledger inks - a vintage-computing story rather than a modern-ink one.
SPEC 007 CYANOTYPE / DARK
#7FC4E8 #4F9FD4 #A9D6EC #DCE8F2 #D96654 #E8C86A #7A92AD #3D6A94 Engineering drawings: near-monochrome blueprint blues with one red pencil and one annotation gold.
SPEC 008 SOLDER / DARK
#CF7F3D #E8C25A #C9D4CF #6DBF7E #3E8FB5 #C94F38 #9D6FC9 #8A9A55 PCB green with copper, gold and tin for the metals and one probe-red. Hardware nostalgia without the CRT cliché.
// try any of them on this site right now - the switcher is in the corner
Download and unzip the pack first. Commands below run from the extracted folder on macOS or Linux. On Windows, copy the VS Code folder into %USERPROFILE%/.vscode/extensions/thecode-themes. The included README also covers terminal installation. The MIT license covers these themes.
// install
VS Code
Unzip the download, then copy its extension folder. Reload VS Code and open Preferences: Color Theme.
$ mkdir -p ~/.vscode/extensions $ cp -R vscode ~/.vscode/extensions/thecode-themes
Neovim
$ mkdir -p ~/.config/nvim/colors
$ cp colors/*.lua ~/.config/nvim/colors/
# init.lua: vim.cmd.colorscheme("thecode-afterimage") Helix
$ mkdir -p ~/.config/helix/themes
$ cp helix/thecode-afterimage.toml ~/.config/helix/themes/
# config.toml: theme = "thecode-afterimage" Zed
$ mkdir -p ~/.config/zed/themes
$ cp zed/thecode.json ~/.config/zed/themes/
# settings: "theme": "theCode: afterimage" Ghostty
$ mkdir -p ~/.config/ghostty/themes
$ cp terminal/ghostty/afterimage ~/.config/ghostty/themes/thecode-afterimage
# in your Ghostty config: theme = thecode-afterimage Reload the configuration after selecting a theme. Ghostty documentation →
Alacritty
$ mkdir -p ~/.config/alacritty/themes
$ cp terminal/alacritty/afterimage.toml ~/.config/alacritty/themes/
# add under [general] in alacritty.toml:
# import = ["~/.config/alacritty/themes/afterimage.toml"] Merge this with any existing import list. Alacritty documentation →
iTerm2
Open Settings → Profiles → Colors → Color Presets → Import. Choose terminal/iterm2/afterimage.itermcolors, then select the imported preset. iTerm2 documentation →
Windows Terminal
Open settings.json and add the object from terminal/windows-terminal/afterimage.json to the schemes array. In your profile, set "colorScheme": "theCode afterimage". Windows Terminal documentation →
// where the palettes came from
The palettes started on paper.
Our posters explore editor color schemes such as gruvbox, Dracula and One Dark Pro. This free theme pack is our own palette family, created for the next chapter of theCode. Digital poster editions for self-printing are in the works — join the newsletter to hear when they're ready.
Notify me at launch →