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What it styles

Slatewave for kitty ships as two files. Pick one:

• slatewave.conf — palette only. Colors, cursor tint, selection, URL hover, window borders, tab bar, marks, and all 16 ANSI slots. Composes with whatever font, window, and cursor-shape settings you already have.
• slatewave-full.conf — palette + opinionated typography. Includes slatewave.conf, then adds Hack Nerd Font Mono at 14pt, a non-blinking block cursor, and a fully opaque, unblurred window. Use this if you want the whole Slatewave house style in one include.

The palette itself is tuned against kitty's full color schema — not just the 16 ANSI colors. It sets:

• ANSI 0–15 — mirrored from the VSCode Slatewave terminal block so ls --color, git diff, and 256-color TUIs all read identically across your editor and terminal
• Background — slate #282c34, matching the VSCode editor background
• Foreground — slate-200 #e2e8f0, matching the VSCode editor foreground
• Cursor — teal #5eead4 with slate-background text, so the block cursor stays legible
• Selection — slate-700 #334155 with slate-200 text, for a calm, non-competing highlight
• URL hover — sky #38bdf8, matching link accents in the editor
• Window borders — teal #5eead4 on the focused split, slate-700 #334155 on inactive splits, amber #fbbf24 for the bell border
• macOS / Wayland titlebar — tinted to the slate background so the chrome blends with the terminal
• Tab bar — teal-on-slate for the active tab, slate-300 on the editor background for inactive, chrome #21252b for the bar itself (matching the VSCode activity bar)
• Marks — rose / amber / sky for mark1 / mark2 / mark3, mirroring the editor's error / warning / info accents

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Installation

With the Slatewave CLI (recommended)

brew tap kevinlangleyjr/slatewave
brew install slatewave
slatewave install kitty

Installs the full bundle (palette + Hack Nerd Font Mono + block cursor + opaque window), drops both theme files into ~/.config/kitty/, and adds include slatewave-full.conf to your kitty.conf. Reload with cmd+ctrl+, (macOS) or ctrl+shift+F5 (Linux/Windows). To remove cleanly: slatewave uninstall kitty.

Manual — palette + typography (slatewave-full.conf)

The full bundle includes slatewave.conf and layers font / cursor / window defaults on top, so you need both files in the same directory. Requires Hack Nerd Font — specifically the Mono variant, so Nerd icons stay single-cell in lazygit, btop, and ls.

mkdir -p ~/.config/kitty
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kevinlangleyjr/kitty-slatewave/main/slatewave-full.conf \
  -o ~/.config/kitty/slatewave-full.conf
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kevinlangleyjr/kitty-slatewave/main/slatewave.conf \
  -o ~/.config/kitty/slatewave.conf

Then in ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf:

include slatewave-full.conf

Reload with cmd+ctrl+, (macOS) or ctrl+shift+F5 (Linux/Windows) — no restart needed.

Manual — palette only (slatewave.conf)

If you don't want the typography opinions and just want the colors, drop only the base palette:

mkdir -p ~/.config/kitty
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kevinlangleyjr/kitty-slatewave/main/slatewave.conf \
  -o ~/.config/kitty/slatewave.conf

Then in ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf:

include slatewave.conf

From a local clone

git clone https://github.com/kevinlangleyjr/kitty-slatewave
cp kitty-slatewave/slatewave.conf      ~/.config/kitty/
cp kitty-slatewave/slatewave-full.conf ~/.config/kitty/  # optional

Inline

If you'd rather not manage a separate theme file, paste the contents of slatewave.conf directly into your ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf — every option is a top-level kitty config key.

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Palette

Slatewave shares its palette with the companion themes. The anchor colors:

	Hex	Tailwind	Role
	#282c34	—	background, inactive tab
	#21252b	—	tab bar
	#334155	slate-700	selection, inactive border
	#1e293b	slate-800	ANSI 0 (black)
	#cbd5e1	slate-300	inactive tab text
	#e2e8f0	slate-200	foreground, ANSI 7 (white)
	#5eead4	teal-300	cursor, active tab, active border, ANSI 2 (green)
	#99f6e4	teal-200	ANSI 10 (bright green)
	#7dd3fc	sky-300	ANSI 12 (bright blue)
	#38bdf8	sky-400	url hover, mark3, ANSI 4 (blue)
	#b388ff	—	ANSI 5 (magenta)
	#fb7185	rose-400	mark1, ANSI 1 (red)
	#fbbf24	amber-400	bell border, mark2, ANSI 11 (bright yellow)

ANSI mapping

Mirrors the terminal.ansi* block from vscode-slatewave so shell output is consistent across editor and terminal.

Slot	Normal	Bright
Black	#1e293b slate-800	#475569 slate-600
Red	#fb7185 rose-400	#ef5350
Green	#5eead4 teal-300	#99f6e4 teal-200
Yellow	#b45309 amber-700	#fbbf24 amber-400
Blue	#38bdf8 sky-400	#7dd3fc sky-300
Magenta	#b388ff	#c4b5fd violet-300
Cyan	#0e7490 cyan-700	#67e8f9 cyan-300
White	#e2e8f0 slate-200	#f1f5f9 slate-100

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Customize

The theme file is a plain kitty config fragment — every entry is a top-level option. To override a single color without forking, put the override after the include line in ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf:

include slatewave.conf

# Override just the cursor
cursor            #99f6e4
cursor_text_color #282c34

Later values win in kitty's parse order, so the override takes effect without editing the theme file itself.

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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
• Prompts — Oh My Posh · Powerlevel10k · Starship
• Multiplexer — tmux
• CLI — bat · 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 changes, include a before/after screenshot of the same terminal session (ls --color, git diff, a TUI like lazygit or btop) so the visual tradeoff is obvious.

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License

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