Venture Codex

Open the codex. Light the lantern. The adventure starts on line 1.

Venture Codex is a vivid VS Code theme built for developers who spend more hours inside the editor than outside it. Every keyword, every function, every glyph is colored like a page from an illuminated manuscript: distinct, readable, made to be lived in. Whether you're chasing a bug at 2 a.m. or shipping a feature on a Monday morning, your eyes should not have to fight your code.

Four coordinated variants share the same color identity:

• Venture Codex Dark — primary variant, vivid hexadic accents on a deep green-cyan ground.
• Venture Codex Light — warm background, vivid dark accents tuned for daylight.
• Venture Codex High Contrast Dark — WCAG-AAA-friendly, for accessibility and projector use.
• Venture Codex High Contrast Light — WCAG-AAA-friendly, warm background with vivid dark accents.

Theme Preview

Venture Codex Dark

Venture Codex Light

Venture Codex High Contrast Dark

Venture Codex High Contrast Light

Installation

From VS Code Marketplace

1. Open Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X).
2. Search for Venture Codex.
3. Click Install.
4. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and run Preferences: Color Theme.
5. Choose one of:
   • Venture Codex Dark
   • Venture Codex Light
   • Venture Codex High Contrast Dark
   • Venture Codex High Contrast Light

Recommended settings

For the best visual experience, pair with a ligature-aware font, enable bracket pair colorization, and tune the cursor:

// settings.json
{
  "editor.fontFamily": "Cascadia Code, Fira Code, JetBrains Mono",
  "editor.fontLigatures": true,
  "editor.cursorBlinking": "smooth",
  "editor.cursorSmoothCaretAnimation": "on",
  "editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": true,
  "editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": true,
  "editor.bracketPairColorization.independentColorPoolPerBracketType": true,
  "editor.guides.bracketPairs": "active",
  "workbench.colorTheme": "Venture Codex Dark"
}

Accessibility

All four variants are tuned for WCAG AA or better on syntax tokens against their respective backgrounds.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. To propose changes:

1. Check WCAG contrast for any new or changed colors against the relevant background.
2. Open a pull request with a clear description and, if applicable, screenshots.

When proposing color changes:

• Prefer adjusting existing palette values over introducing new colors.
• Preserve the role separation across variants (Dark, Light, HC Dark, HC Light) so the four themes feel like one family.
• Keep this README and CHANGELOG.md updated with any user-facing change.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.