Bloodloss

A native dark VS Code theme with near-black surfaces, bone-white text, crimson accents, and original optional file icons. By John Sirmon / The Shark Artist.

Install

Requires VS Code 1.137.0 or newer within the 1.x line.

Choose the editor and profile first. VS Code and VS Code Insiders keep separate profiles and extension installations. Open Manage > Profiles in the intended window, note the current profile, and install from that window's Extensions view. Installing into Default does not install into every named profile. A Marketplace install link or an unqualified CLI command may target a different editor/profile than the window you are using.

1. Install Bloodloss by shark-labs from the Extensions view.
2. Run Preferences: Color Theme and select Bloodloss.
3. Optionally run Preferences: File Icon Theme and select:
   • Bloodloss Agent File Icons for neutral everyday files and crimson agent-related files and folders.
   • Bloodloss File Icons for the original multicolor language icons.

Color and file icon themes are selected independently. Your existing icon theme stays selected until you choose another. Restore either selection through the same native controls.

For CLI installs, use code for VS Code or code-insiders for Insiders, and use the same --profile "Your existing profile name" for installation and --list-extensions --show-versions verification. Check the exact name in the Profiles screen first: native CLI commands can create a new profile for an unknown name. Omit --profile only when you explicitly intend the Default profile. Installation output alone does not confirm that an already-open window has enabled or loaded the extension; follow its reload prompt.

Included

• One dark theme for the editor, workbench, terminal, diagnostics, and diffs.
• TextMate and semantic-token styling with contrast checks on highlighted code.
• Two optional file icon variants with recognizable language/type glyphs and file, folder, expanded-folder and workspace-root fallbacks.

The theme is static: no runtime code, telemetry, commands, automatic settings changes, or bundled companion extension. File icons indicate file types, not agent activity. Compatibility with other editors is not claimed.

Make agent files stand out

Choose Bloodloss Agent File Icons to reserve rose/crimson for instructions, prompts, agents, skills, and MCP configuration. Examples include AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, GEMINI.md, copilot-instructions.md, SKILL.md, mcp.json, .mcp.json, and files ending in .agent.md, .instructions.md, .prompt.md or .chatmode.md.

Named folders such as agents, instructions, prompts, skills, chatmodes, .agents, .claude, .copilot and .gemini also stand out, open or closed. Ordinary source files, JSON, Markdown, Git, locks, .github and .vscode stay neutral. Both dark and light palettes are included.

Matching is by native filename, suffix, language or folder name, not contents or agent activity. Folder names match anywhere; their children do not inherit red. The icon theme replaces your current set; it cannot selectively recolor icons from another extension. Switch back through Preferences: File Icon Theme.

Optional Bloodstream companion

Bloodloss's static theme and icons work on their own. The independently packaged Bloodloss: Bloodstream is not bundled, auto-installed or required by this theme. The theme is 0.1.3, with unchanged colors and both icon sets.

The independently packaged companion 0.1.5 offers manual, bounded, read-only checks of possible instruction, agent/skill and MCP configuration sources. The Bloodloss Activity Bar container opens the existing script-free Bloodstream view with original skull artwork. Nothing runs until you scan: activation, opening/restoring the view and the native theme picker do not scan.

Use Bloodstream: Scan / Refresh Health explicitly, Cancel Health Scan to stop new work, and Open Health Source for a native picker of observed sources. Results carry scope, provenance and the last explicit scan time; they are snapshots, not live activity. Measured files, configured servers, declared providers and registered tools are separate observations, not proof of active context, loaded skills, enabled tools or running servers. A missing/unobservable source is not zero or healthy.

Instruction size and exact repeated-line indicators are not an overall health score. Rough tokens use ceil(codePoints / 4), an English-text heuristic, not model tokenization or actual prompt consumption. Repetition normalizes only whitespace, preserves case/punctuation, and excludes empty lines, headings, frontmatter and fenced code. Its ratio is occurrences beyond the first divided by eligible line occurrences; a zero denominator is not applicable.

Scans accept at most 1,000 matching artifacts, 256 KiB per file and 8 MiB of text, with at most four concurrent filesystem operations. A distinct 1,001st artifact shows textual Scan limit exceeded and incomplete coverage, not a Copilot failure. Dependencies, generated outputs, caches and ordinary code are excluded. Directory, repetition-index and displayed-row budgets further bound work. Personal/shared sources require an unambiguous local home; Restricted Mode keeps workspace-local checks. Remote personal and unavailable profile/provider coverage remain explicit gaps. Whole-file provider reads cannot be forcibly aborted, so accepted-text caps are not hard provider-memory bounds.

There is no startup/background scan, watcher, observer/hook, history/review, task execution, tool/provider invocation, network/model call or settings write. The webview disables scripts and command URIs and has no message bridge. MCP values/credentials and instruction bodies are not rendered. Pinned jsonc-parser 3.3.1 is the only bundled production dependency, within a 128 KiB runtime budget; the theme remains dependency-free. Older state is not read, migrated or deleted.

The previous companion 0.1.1 is a historical runtime preview, not this feature. Check the exact installed version rather than inferring behavior from the extension name.

Before replacing an older companion: use its Disconnect Local Observer command if available, then inspect user-managed external hook configuration and remove only entries previously added by Bloodstream. Preserve unrelated hooks and user data. Complete this before installing the new companion; manually remove those entries if the old command is unavailable or cleanup is incomplete. External hooks may keep running after replacement, disabling or uninstalling. The new companion cannot shut them down and does not edit external configuration.

Install Bloodloss: Bloodstream by shark-labs from the Extensions view in your chosen editor/profile, or use Extensions: Install from VSIX... with a trusted, inspected 0.1.5 artifact. Follow the reload prompt. Open the Bloodloss Activity Bar entry to see the scan invitation. The right paint-can status shortcut appears only after opening Bloodstream or running Bloodstream: Choose Color Theme. It and the view-title button open the native theme picker. Choose any installed theme or Escape to cancel. Use Preferences: File Icon Theme separately. The companion does not write appearance settings itself.

If the sidebar is missing, search Extensions for @id:shark-labs.bloodloss-agent-workspace in the intended window and check its version and Enable/Reload state. Missing old setup/observer commands is expected in this version. The companion works with other themes and can be disabled independently. Native MCP: List Servers, Chat: Open Customizations and Developer: Open Agent Debug Panel can offer complementary host information; Bloodstream does not scrape these surfaces or invoke undocumented commands.

Support

Use this listing's Q & A tab for non-sensitive questions and bug reports. Include the extension version, VS Code version, operating system, and a minimal sanitized reproduction. Do not post credentials, private workspace content, or security-sensitive details. No response-time guarantee is offered.

License and artwork

MIT licensed; the license is included in the installed extension. Original implementation and artwork by John Sirmon. Branding was developed with AI-assisted concepts and manually refined into extension assets. The icon above is the already-published Bloodloss package icon, not an editor screenshot.