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What's in the box

File	Purpose
Slatewave.tmTheme	Sublime Text–compatible color scheme — bat reads .tmTheme files for syntax highlighting

bat uses syntect under the hood and consumes the same .tmTheme format Sublime Text and TextMate use, so this theme is the same palette and scope mapping you'd get from Slatewave for Sublime Text — re-shipped as a TextMate plist for bat's theme cache.

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Requirements

• bat ≥ 0.18 — install guide
• A terminal that runs Slatewave (or any 24-bit / true-color terminal). For the full experience pair with Slatewave for Alacritty / Ghostty / iTerm2 / WezTerm / Windows Terminal.

True-color required. bat's .tmTheme themes only render correctly when bat can output 24-bit color. If you run bat in a terminal limited to 256 colors, the slate ramp collapses and the teal/sky/purple accents drift. Set TERM=xterm-256color and make sure COLORTERM=truecolor is exported (most modern terminals set this automatically).

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Installation

Clone + register with bat

# Drop the theme into bat's user theme directory
mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
git clone https://github.com/kevinlangleyjr/bat-slatewave.git \
  "$(bat --config-dir)/themes/Slatewave"

# Rebuild bat's theme cache so it can find it
bat cache --build

bat's --config-dir resolves to:

• macOS — ~/.config/bat/ (or ~/Library/Application Support/bat/ on older builds)
• Linux — ~/.config/bat/
• Windows — %APPDATA%\bat\

Or: curl the file straight in

mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kevinlangleyjr/bat-slatewave/main/Slatewave.tmTheme \
  -o "$(bat --config-dir)/themes/Slatewave.tmTheme"
bat cache --build

Activate the theme

One-shot:

bat --theme=Slatewave README.md

Per-shell default — set the BAT_THEME env var:

# zsh / bash
export BAT_THEME="Slatewave"

# fish
set -gx BAT_THEME Slatewave

Or persist it in bat's config file (bat --config-file):

--theme="Slatewave"

Verify

bat --list-themes | grep Slatewave
bat --theme=Slatewave --color=always /path/to/some.go | head -40

You should see teal strings, sky-blue keywords, italic-purple storage keywords, and rose-pink numbers and constants — the same balance as the editor ports.

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Palette

Slatewave shares its palette with the companion themes. Every color resolves to a semantic role, so syntax behavior is consistent across bat, your editor, and your terminal.

Foundation — slate

	Hex	Tailwind	Where
	#282c34	slate-editor	page background
	#1e293b	slate-800	line highlight
	#3a3f4c	slate-guide	indentation guides
	#64748b	slate-500	comments, line numbers
	#94a3b8	slate-400	operators, punctuation
	#cbd5e1	slate-300	parameters, properties
	#e2e8f0	slate-200	default foreground

Signature — teal

	Hex	Tailwind	Where
	#5eead4	teal-300	strings, markdown headings, diff inserted
	#99f6e4	teal-200	types, classes, inline code

Accents

	Hex	Tailwind	Role
	#38bdf8	sky-400	keywords, tags, links
	#7dd3fc	sky-300	functions, JSON/YAML keys, CSS properties
	—	storage (const/let/function), this/self, attributes
	#fb7185	rose-400	numbers, constants, regex, diff deleted
	#fbbf24	amber-400	decorators, escape chars, diff changed
	#b45309	amber-700	deprecated symbols
	#ef5350	red-400	invalid syntax

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Syntax mapping

Token		Color	Style
Comments		#64748b	italic
Keywords (if, return, import)		#38bdf8	—
Storage (const, let, function, class)		#b388ff	italic
Types / classes / interfaces		#99f6e4	—
Functions (calls + definitions)		#7dd3fc	—
Strings		#5eead4	—
Numbers, booleans, null, undefined		#fb7185	—
Constants (UPPER_SNAKE)		#fb7185	—
Regex		#fb7185	—
Escape sequences		#fbbf24	—
Decorators / annotations		#fbbf24	italic
this / self / super		#b388ff	italic
Parameters		#cbd5e1	italic
Operators, punctuation		#94a3b8	—
HTML/JSX tags		#38bdf8	—
HTML/JSX attributes		#b388ff	italic
CSS selectors		#5eead4	—
CSS properties		#7dd3fc	—
Markdown headings		#5eead4	bold
Markdown links		#38bdf8	underline
Diff inserted		#5eead4	—
Diff deleted		#fb7185	—
Diff changed		#fbbf24	—

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Pairing with delta and other tools that read bat themes

A handful of CLI tools delegate syntax highlighting to bat's theme cache (and accept a --theme flag of their own). Once Slatewave is registered with bat cache --build, these all see it:

• git-delta — set syntax-theme = Slatewave in your ~/.gitconfig [delta] section.
• fzf preview — fzf --preview 'bat --theme=Slatewave --color=always {}'.
• ripgrep-all — pipes through bat when paged.

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Customize

bat doesn't merge user overrides over a theme the way lsd or Helix do — to tweak a single scope you need to fork the .tmTheme. The simplest path:

# Fork
cp "$(bat --config-dir)/themes/Slatewave/Slatewave.tmTheme" \
   "$(bat --config-dir)/themes/Slatewave-Mine.tmTheme"

# Edit the file, change the <key>name</key> at the top to "Slatewave-Mine",
# then rebuild
bat cache --build
bat --theme=Slatewave-Mine README.md

Common tweaks live in the <settings> blocks near the top: change a <key>foreground</key> or <key>fontStyle</key> value and rebuild.

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Slatewave family

One palette. Every tool.

• Editors — VSCode · JetBrains · Xcode · Sublime Text · Zed · Neovim · Helix
• Terminals — Alacritty · Ghostty · iTerm2 · WezTerm · Windows Terminal · Kitty
• Prompts — Oh My Posh · Powerlevel10k · Starship
• Multiplexer — tmux
• CLI — delta · LSD · btop
• Notes — Obsidian · Logseq · MarkEdit · Anytype
• Launchers — Alfred · Raycast
• Chat — Slack

See getslatewave.com for the full family.

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Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. For palette tweaks, please include a before/after screenshot of bat --theme=Slatewave against a representative file (Go, TypeScript, or Markdown work well) so the visual tradeoff is obvious.

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License

WTFPL — Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License. See LICENSE.