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What it styles

delta exposes a flat, generous set of style keys — minus / plus, emph / non-emph, hunk / file / commit headers, line numbers, blame, merge conflicts, grep output. Slatewave maps each onto the family palette so the diff reads spatially, not just chromatically:

• Minus / plus — desaturated rose and teal tints behind a syntax foreground, so syntax highlighting stays legible against the role color
• Emph styles — saturated rose / teal for the bytes that actually changed inside a line, so delta's word-level diff signal is unmistakable
• Hunk header — teal-300 label inside a slate-600 box; @@ -12,7 +12,9 @@ math rendered in amber so the line-number jump pops
• File header — slate-200 bold with a teal underline rule
• Line numbers — slate gutter, rose for minus, teal for plus, slate-500 for zero
• Blame palette — a four-step slate gradient so authorship reads as depth
• Merge conflicts — rose for "ours", teal for "theirs"
• Grep output — teal for filenames, amber for line numbers, rose-reverse on the matched word

Pairs with bat-slatewave, which registers the Slatewave syntax theme that delta reads via syntax-theme.

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Requirements

• delta ≥ 0.16 — install guide
• bat-slatewave (recommended) — registers the Slatewave syntax theme via bat cache --build. Without it, swap syntax-theme = Slatewave for a bat default like base16-256, or remove the line entirely.

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Installation

delta is configured entirely through ~/.gitconfig. There are two clean paths.

Clone + include

git clone https://github.com/kevinlangleyjr/delta-slatewave.git \
  ~/.config/delta-slatewave
git config --global include.path \
  ~/.config/delta-slatewave/slatewave.gitconfig

include.path layers the file into your global git config, so updates land with git -C ~/.config/delta-slatewave pull.

Or: paste the block straight in

Copy the contents of slatewave.gitconfig into your ~/.gitconfig and you're done. This is the path to take if you want to tweak individual keys in place.

Verify

git -C any-repo log -p | head -60

You should see slate-tinted minus/plus blocks, a teal hunk header sat in a slate box, and amber line-number math.

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Palette

Slatewave shares its palette with the companion themes. Every color resolves to a semantic role.

Foundation — slate

	Hex	Tailwind	Where
	#1e293b	slate-800	blame stop 0
	#282c34	slate-editor	blame stop 1
	#334155	slate-700	blame stop 2
	#475569	slate-600	blame stop 3, header rule, line gutter
	#64748b	slate-500	zero-line numbers
	#94a3b8	slate-400	hunk-header file path
	#cbd5e1	slate-300	commit body
	#e2e8f0	slate-200	file header

Diff roles

	Hex	Tailwind	Where
	#5eead4	teal-300	hunk header, plus line numbers, file underline
	#0e3a35	teal-deep	plus background
	#1d6457	teal-emph	plus-emph background (changed bytes)
	#fb7185	rose-400	minus line numbers, ours-conflict, whitespace error
	#3b0e1a	rose-deep	minus background
	#7a1a2a	rose-emph	minus-emph background (changed bytes)
	#fbbf24	amber-400	hunk-header line numbers, grep line numbers

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Style key map

Key	Color	Notes
minus-style	syntax on #3b0e1a	full minus line
minus-emph-style	syntax bold on #7a1a2a	bytes that changed
minus-non-emph-style	syntax on #2a0a13	bytes that did not change
plus-style	syntax on #0e3a35	full plus line
plus-emph-style	syntax bold on #1d6457	bytes that changed
plus-non-emph-style	syntax on #0a2a26	bytes that did not change
zero-style	syntax	unchanged context
hunk-header-style	#5eead4 bold	the @@ ... @@ label
hunk-header-decoration-style	#475569 box	slate box around it
hunk-header-file-style	#94a3b8	filename next to the label
hunk-header-line-number-style	#fbbf24 bold	the -12,7 +12,9 numbers
file-style	#e2e8f0 bold	file path
file-decoration-style	#5eead4 ul	teal underline rule
commit-style	#cbd5e1 bold	commit hash + author body
commit-decoration-style	#475569 box	slate box
line-numbers-left-style	#475569	gutter, minus column
line-numbers-right-style	#475569	gutter, plus column
line-numbers-minus-style	#fb7185	line numbers on a minus line
line-numbers-plus-style	#5eead4	line numbers on a plus line
line-numbers-zero-style	#64748b	line numbers on context
whitespace-error-style	#fb7185 reverse	trailing whitespace, mixed indent
blame-palette	slate gradient	#1e293b → #475569
merge-conflict-ours-diff-header-style	#fb7185 bold	"ours" header
merge-conflict-theirs-diff-header-style	#5eead4 bold	"theirs" header
grep-file-style	#5eead4	filename in git grep
grep-line-number-style	#fbbf24	line number in git grep
grep-match-word-style	#fb7185 reverse	the matched substring

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Customize

Override in place. Every delta.* key is independent — drop a single line in your own ~/.gitconfig after the include and it wins.

# Bump the plus tint to a brighter teal
[delta]
    plus-style      = syntax "#114a44"
    plus-emph-style = syntax bold "#1f7867"

# Or go side-by-side
[delta]
    side-by-side = true

Pair with bat-slatewave

syntax-theme = Slatewave resolves through bat's theme cache. Install bat-slatewave and run bat cache --build to register it; without that step, set syntax-theme to a built-in like base16-256 or Coldark-Dark.

Pair with line numbers off

If you prefer a tighter view, drop line-numbers = true. The hunk header alone still gives you the -12,7 +12,9 math, so you don't lose orientation.

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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 — bat · 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 git log -p screenshot against a representative diff (a refactor with mixed adds/removes/renames works well) so the visual tradeoff is obvious.

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License

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