Amber Material High Contrast

A high-contrast dark and light theme pair for VS Code and Cursor with an amber accent, plus warm, Material-inspired high-contrast Ghostty terminal themes and a bundled Amber Material file icon theme. The same amber identity also ships for Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode, Windows Terminal, PowerShell, and Starship — the editor and the terminal keep deliberately different surfaces, described under Ghostty.

Derived from vscode-palenight-theme by Olaolu Olawuyi, used under the MIT License.

Preview

Dark

Light

Actual VS Code screenshots. Fonts and layout are user settings.

Design philosophy

“Material” describes the design language, not a claim that this is an official Google theme or a reproduction of Google's palette. Material Design began at Google as a system inspired by physical surfaces such as paper and ink, using hierarchy, spacing, color, light, and motion to make interfaces easier to understand.

Amber Material High Contrast carries those principles into a developer environment in both dark and light variants:

• Amber is the identity. #FFCB6B marks fills, highlights, and buttons on both variants. On cream, amber text (links, line numbers) uses #A65F00, and the Ghostty caret plus Starship prompt use a yellower #C99200 so glyphs stay readable without turning brown.
• Material is the design language. Layered surfaces, deliberate color roles, and restrained structural borders create hierarchy.
• High Contrast is the functional promise. Code, controls, and semantic states remain easy to distinguish on both the dark and light surfaces.

The theme's direct lineage is:

Material-inspired design → Palenight → Amber Material High Contrast

It retains Palenight's syntax foundation while giving the workbench and terminal a distinct amber-led, higher-contrast identity.

Install

This is a VS Code extension. The same VSIX installs in VS Code and in Cursor. Download the VSIX from GitHub Releases, or package it from this repository. Registry publication is tracked separately; see the publishing guide.

npm ci --ignore-scripts
npm run package

That writes amber-material-theme-1.1.1.vsix in the repository root.

VS Code

code --install-extension amber-material-theme-1.1.1.vsix

Cursor

cursor --install-extension amber-material-theme-1.1.1.vsix

Alternatively, in Cursor open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux) and run Extensions: Install from VSIX…, then choose that file.

Then, in either editor, select both bundled themes:

1. Cmd+K Cmd+T / Ctrl+K Ctrl+T → Amber Material High Contrast or Amber Material Light High Contrast
2. Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P → Preferences: File Icon Theme → Amber Material Icons

Build

Run these in order — each step reads the output of the ones before it:

python3 scripts/build_ghostty.py      # ghostty/amber-material{,-light}
python3 scripts/build_theme.py        # themes/amber-material{-light,}-hc.json
python3 scripts/build_codex_theme.py  # codex/amber-material{-light,}-high-contrast.tmTheme
python3 scripts/build_terminal_suite.py   # Claude, OpenCode, Windows, PowerShell, Starship
python3 scripts/build_grok_theme.py   # grok/ palette export and pager.toml / pager-light.toml
python3 scripts/vendor_material_icons.py  # pinned VS Code icon snapshot
python3 scripts/check_generated.py    # verify nothing drifted

Tests for the drift check itself:

python3 scripts/test_check_generated.py

scripts/build_ghostty.py owns the terminal palette and runs first, because the VS Code theme takes its 16 ANSI colors from it. scripts/build_theme.py is the source of truth for everything else in VS Code and Cursor: it reads the upstream MIT base (scripts/base-palenight-italic.json) and applies this variant's palette on top. There is no second, Cursor-only theme file. scripts/build_codex_theme.py combines the VS Code TextMate scopes with the Ghostty terminal surfaces for Codex CLI. scripts/ghostty_palette.py is the shared reader for the Ghostty theme.

scripts/check_generated.py re-runs the chain into a temporary tree and compares every generated file, so a hand edit or a stale output fails loudly instead of sitting in the repository unnoticed. It also verifies the icon snapshot against the digests recorded in vendor/material-icon-theme.json, since vendor_material_icons.py needs an installed VS Code extension and cannot run offline.

scripts/test_check_generated.py covers that checker's failure modes — a corrupted, renamed or deleted asset, a missing definition, a dangling reference — against a synthetic snapshot in a temporary directory. The happy path is easy to get right and was the only thing originally exercised; these are the cases that were not.

scripts/vendor_material_icons.py snapshots Material Icon Theme 5.37.0 from a locally installed VS Code extension, then deterministically applies amber folders (#FFCB6B) and 0.9 saturation. It has no runtime dependency on the upstream extension. Never hand-edit generated files in themes/, ghostty/, codex/, claude-code/, opencode/, windows-terminal/, powershell/, starship/, grok/, icon-themes/, or icons/amber-material/.

To re-accent the entire theme, edit the DARK and LIGHT profiles in scripts/variants.py. Light keeps three amber roles on purpose: fill gold (amber_bright, #FFCB6B), cream-readable text (amber, #A65F00), and Ghostty/Starship prompt gold (prompt_amber, #C99200).

VS Code palette (dark)

The same palette is the source of truth in Cursor. There is no second, Cursor-only theme JSON.

VS Code palette (light)

Editor and sidebar share that first surface on purpose. Cursor paints chat and composer with editor.background rather than sideBar.background; because those two tokens are the same hex here, the auxiliary bar matches Explorer instead of looking like a different panel. Ghostty's caret and Starship's prompt gold on cream are #C99200, not a VS Code workbench token.

Border convention

Amber marks state, not structure. Focus rings, the active tab underline, and the active sidebar indicator are amber; widget, popup, input, and peek-view outlines use the recessive border (#3A4052 dark, #E8E2D8 light) so the UI isn't a grid of yellow boxes.

What a color theme does not control

The package ships both a color theme and a file icon theme, but VS Code and Cursor keep them as separate selections. Font and layout preferences remain user settings:

Cursor chat, composer, and Agents Window

Chat, composer, the auxiliary bar, and the parts of the agent panel that honor a color theme use the VS Code tokens this generator already sets: chat.*, inlineChat.*, agents*, textLink.*, scrollbars, tabs, and the status bar.

Two Cursor surfaces are not themeable from this package, and we do not inject CSS or invent private tokens to fake them:

• Agents Window chrome. Some of that window ignores workbench.colorTheme. The agents* keys cover the slots VS Code actually registers; the rest of that chrome stays on Cursor's own default until Cursor themes it.
• Agent chat file-path and citation links. Those often use Cursor's --cursor-text-link color, which does not follow textLink.foreground. Markdown links that do honor textLink.foreground render in amber (#FFCB6B dark, #A65F00 light).

Suggested companion settings

These are optional. workbench.colorTheme and workbench.iconTheme are the same keys in VS Code and in Cursor; set them after installing the VSIX if you want the themes selected without using the Command Palette.

{
  "workbench.colorTheme": "Amber Material High Contrast", // or "Amber Material Light High Contrast"

  // Cascadia Code NF: ligatures + Nerd Font glyphs for terminal prompts.
  // brew install --cask font-cascadia-code-nf
  "editor.fontFamily": "'Cascadia Code NF', 'Cascadia Code', Menlo, monospace",
  "editor.fontSize": 13,
  "editor.lineHeight": 1.6,
  "editor.fontLigatures": true,

  // Bundled, pinned Material Icon Theme snapshot with amber folders.
  "workbench.iconTheme": "amber-material-icons",

  "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "'Cascadia Code NF', 'Cascadia Code', Menlo, monospace",
  "terminal.integrated.fontSize": 13
}

Fonts

brew install --cask font-cascadia-code-nf   # ligatures + Nerd Font glyphs
brew install --cask font-cascadia-mono-nf   # same, without ligatures

Use the family name exactly as macOS registers it (Cascadia Code NF, not CascadiaCodeNF); check with:

system_profiler SPFontsDataType | grep -i 'family: cascadia'

The extension includes Amber Material Icons, a static snapshot of Material Icon Theme 5.37.0. Its SVG assets travel inside the VSIX, so installing the upstream icon extension is not required and upstream deprecation cannot remove this snapshot.

Cascadia Code NF is intentionally not bundled. It is the recommended editor and terminal font; its Nerd Font glyphs are useful in prompts and code, while Explorer uses the more portable bundled SVG icons.

Ghostty

ghostty/amber-material and ghostty/amber-material-light use purpose-built terminal palettes: warm Gruvbox Material-style bases, clearer Material Design-inspired ANSI colors, and the same amber identity accent as the VS Code themes.

Dark

Light

What the editor and the terminal share

The 16 ANSI colors are shared per variant: each VS Code theme takes its terminal.ansi* values from the matching Ghostty file, so the same command renders the same way in Ghostty and in VS Code's integrated terminal.

The surfaces are not. Ghostty's standalone window uses a slightly different base from the editor so a dedicated terminal does not look like a second workbench panel:

Install the theme

From the repository root (or an extracted terminal-suite release bundle):

mkdir -p ~/.config/ghostty/themes
cp ghostty/amber-material ~/.config/ghostty/themes/amber-material
cp ghostty/amber-material-light ~/.config/ghostty/themes/amber-material-light

Ghostty looks up named custom themes in ~/.config/ghostty/themes (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ghostty/themes when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set).

Configure Ghostty

Set the theme in your Ghostty configuration:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config.ghostty
• XDG/Linux: ~/.config/ghostty/config.ghostty

theme = amber-material          # or amber-material-light
font-family = Cascadia Code NF
font-size = 16

Keep your preferred font size if it differs. Cascadia Code NF gives VS Code, Ghostty, and prompts such as Starship or Powerlevel10k the same glyph coverage. Ghostty 1.2 and newer also include a Nerd Font symbols fallback, so an NF-patched primary font is optional in Ghostty even though it is useful for consistency across applications.

Reload the configuration with Cmd+Shift+, on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+, on Linux. New terminals will use the updated theme.

Validate

If the ghostty CLI is on PATH:

ghostty +validate-config

For the standard macOS app installation:

/Applications/Ghostty.app/Contents/MacOS/ghostty +validate-config

Codex

Desktop app

Open Settings → Appearance and match the Ghostty surfaces so the desktop app tracks the Codex CLI rather than the VS Code editor:

Dark

Light

The dark pair is a 12.56:1 text contrast ratio. Accent stays the fill gold on both; cream-readable amber (#A65F00) is for editor text, not this picker. Keeping the system UI font preserves native macOS readability.

CLI

The generated Codex CLI theme uses the warmer Ghostty background and foreground for terminal continuity, then carries over the VS Code TextMate syntax rules.

Regenerate it with the build chain — the order matters there, since build_codex_theme.py reads both the Ghostty palette and the VS Code theme, and build_theme.py in turn reads the Ghostty palette. Then install it:

mkdir -p ~/.codex/themes
cp codex/amber-material-high-contrast.tmTheme \
  ~/.codex/themes/amber-material-high-contrast.tmTheme
cp codex/amber-material-light-high-contrast.tmTheme \
  ~/.codex/themes/amber-material-light-high-contrast.tmTheme

Inside an interactive Codex CLI session, run /theme and choose Amber Material High Contrast or Amber Material Light High Contrast. Alternatively, configure it directly:

[tui]
theme = "amber-material-high-contrast"  # or amber-material-light-high-contrast

The .tmTheme controls syntax-highlighted code blocks and diffs. Ghostty still controls the surrounding terminal background and ANSI colors.

Codex theme support is documented in the official CLI customization guide.

Grok Build

scripts/build_grok_theme.py generates two files in grok/. They are split this way because Grok divides appearance across two mechanisms, and only one of them currently accepts outside input.

What Grok does not load yet

grok/amber-material-high-contrast.json and grok/amber-material-light-high-contrast.json are the full palette exports: all 59 color slots Grok's theme system defines, under the slot names from its theming guide (accent_user, bg_base, diff_insert_bg, and so on).

Grok cannot load it today. Grok Build validates [ui].theme against a closed set of five built-in themes — groknight, grokday, tokyonight, rosepine-moon, oscura-midnight — and rejects anything else with unknown theme name. There is no custom_theme, theme_path, or theme directory setting. The bundled .tmTheme files for code blocks are compiled into the binary and, per xAI's own guide, "you cannot replace them with your own."

The export exists so the palette is derived from the same source as every other target and stays in the drift check, rather than being reconstructed by hand if and when xAI opens theme loading up. It is also directly usable as a machine-readable palette by anything else that reads one.

What Grok does load

grok/pager.toml and grok/pager-light.toml are the parts that take effect now. Grok reads ~/.grok/pager.toml for TUI appearance, and it accepts raw colors for the scrollbar plus the block styling that the accents land on:

cp grok/pager.toml ~/.grok/pager.toml           # dark
cp grok/pager-light.toml ~/.grok/pager.toml   # light

Changes apply on restart. Every key and enum value in the generated file was verified against the installed binary's own schema strings.

Since [ui].theme stays on one of the five built-ins, pick the one closest to your variant — groknight for dark, grokday for light:

[ui]
theme = "groknight"  # or grokday for the light variant

Ghostty still controls the surrounding terminal background and ANSI colors, so running Grok inside the Ghostty theme is what actually makes the session read as Amber Material.

Cross-terminal suite

The repository generates coordinated configurations for both dark and light variants across:

All five are generated from the existing Ghostty and VS Code palettes by scripts/build_terminal_suite.py. Starship ships both palettes in one file, starship/amber-material.toml: set palette = "amber_material" or palette = "amber_material_light". Cascadia Code NF is used by Starship for symbols but remains an installation prerequisite rather than a redistributed font.

Terminal release bundles contain these configurations, Ghostty, Codex, Grok, installation docs, and license notices; no source build is needed. See the publishing and distribution guide for release packaging and upstream discovery options.

See Terminal suite setup for macOS, Linux, and Windows installation instructions.

License

This project is released under the MIT License.

It contains material derived from the MIT-licensed Palenight theme and a pinned snapshot of the MIT-licensed Material Icon Theme. Third-party attribution is collected in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. The upstream license texts are retained in LICENSE-upstream-palenight.md, LICENSE-material-icon-theme.txt, and LICENSE-Apache-2.0.txt.