Heyyy... Shuush IT’S NIGHT... CODE doesn’t have to be noisy. let’s listen to the rain... drops... and our heartbeats... isn’t it Limei...

limei.nvim

limei.nvim is a deeply dark, muted Neovim colorscheme designed for long programming sessions. It combines a neutral #101010 charcoal canvas, soft foregrounds, distinct semantic syntax identities, and quiet plugin surfaces.

The goal is not maximum contrast or screenshot impact. The goal is an editor that remains readable and comfortable after ten hours.

Editor

A quiet, neutral palette

Limei is emotionally neutral: calm, precise, detached from visual noise, and timeless. It is not dominated by blue, cyan, icy, or metallic color. Cool color is reserved for occasional links, references, and informational states.

Colors have meaning

Color is a semantic language rather than decoration.

Role	Meaning
variable	Ordinary contextual data
callable	Callable behavior and execution
structure	Language grammar and construction
literal	Literal textual content
numeric	Numeric quantity
type	Shape, schema, and data category
symbol	Fixed or symbolic identity
logic	Logical state and bounded choice
error	Failure, deletion, and destructive state
conflict	Conflict, exception, and interruption
transform	Pattern, replacement, and transformation
warning	Attention, warning, and active process
success	Completed success and accepted state
information	Reference, link, and non-urgent information
navigation	Path, directory, import, and external target

These meanings remain stable across syntax, Treesitter, semantic tokens, diagnostics, Git, completion, LSP, file explorers, DAP, tasks, and plugins. Most code and UI remain neutral.

Locked palette

The canonical palette is immutable. Integrations and generated terminal themes must reuse these roles without modifying, deriving, brightening, or darkening their values.

Surfaces and foregrounds

Role	Value	Role	Value
bg_deep	#080808	bg	#101010
bg_inactive	#0c0c0c	bg_alt	#141414
bg_surface	#171717	bg_popup	#141414
bg_selection	#292724	bg_active	#302d29
fg	#ada9a3	fg_bright	#c0bbb3
fg_dim	#837f78	fg_muted	#64605a
fg_hidden	#393632

Semantic colors

Role	Value	Role	Value
variable	#ada9a3	callable	#9a897c
structure	#9a7869	literal	#7f8c77
numeric	#a38762	type	#97916f
symbol	#8d818a	logic	#898661
error	#9a7477	conflict	#9b7469
transform	#9c795e	warning	#a38762
success	#768569	information	#788184
navigation	#918862

#9b7469 is also Limei's signature visual center. The canonical palette keeps its original conflict meaning for merge and interruption states, while the focused LimeiSignature highlight reuses that locked value for selected declarations, primary Markdown headings, and compact normal-mode emphasis. It is never assigned to ordinary variables, punctuation, or persistent surfaces. Clay, transform orange, callable taupe, and warning amber provide related warm distinctions without deriving or adding colors.

Structural colors

Role	Value	Role	Value
border	#373330	separator	#090909
whitespace	#34312f	indent	#272522
indent_scope	#514940

Limei explicitly maps Neovim's complete standard Tree-sitter capture taxonomy. Specialized captures retain their actual meaning: paths use navigation, URLs use information, function-like macros use callable identity, constant macros and symbols use symbolic identity, checked items use success, and attributes use information identity. Tree-sitter query-control captures remain unstyled. Parser-backed tests verify representative captures emitted by Neovim's Lua, C, and Markdown queries.

Distinct semantic identities

Important categories are recognizable without rainbow syntax:

Code category	Identity
Variables, fields, properties	Neutral data
Functions and methods	Muted callable
General keywords and tags	Muted structure
Selected declarations	Signature rust
Strings and characters	Muted literal
Numbers and floats	Muted numeric
Types and schemas	Muted type
Constants	Muted symbol
Booleans and state enums	Muted logic
Comments	Secondary neutral

Related elements share an identity; unrelated high-frequency categories do not reuse the same visible color. Parameters and punctuation stay neutral or dim; modules and attributes use restrained information, operators use logic, and paths use navigation.

Neovim's legacy Bash and POSIX shell syntax is normalized when a Tree-sitter parser is unavailable: ordinary variables remain neutral, expansion punctuation recedes, commands use callable emphasis, control flow uses transformation, special variables use symbolic identity, and operators use logic.

Added content uses success, changed content uses warning, removed content uses error, and untracked content stays neutral until its state becomes meaningful. These mappings reuse Limei's canonical palette without altering its colors.

Quiet surfaces

Floating windows, completion menus, and plugin popups stay close to the editor background. Active and inactive splits share one editor background, with focus communicated by ordinary editor cues. Split separators are subtle darker-than-background characters. Floats use visible muted neutral borders, including standard LSP hover documentation.

Critical states use signs, labels, undercurls, icons, or text styles where the interface supports them, rather than relying on hue alone.

Quiet structural cues

Limei keeps ordinary line numbers dim so they remain available without competing with code. The current line number is slightly clearer.

Matching brackets and quotes use Limei's muted warning yellow with bold emphasis, making the active pair clear without adding a background block.

Active and inactive splits share the same editor background. A foreground-only black separator provides a subtle boundary between windows.

The statusline and bundled lualine theme use the editor background as well, keeping mode and section identity in the foreground instead of colored blocks.

Whitespace markers use very low-contrast neutral colors. They remain discoverable when needed without becoming immediate visual noise, while end-of-buffer markers disappear into the editor background.

Requirements

• Neovim 0.10+
• A true-color terminal
• No runtime dependencies

Installation

With lazy.nvim:

{
  "harunnoir/limei.nvim",
  lazy = false,
  priority = 1000,
  config = function()
    require("limei").setup()
    vim.cmd.colorscheme("limei")
  end,
}

For local development, replace the repository name with:

dir = "/path/to/limei.nvim"

Calling setup() is optional:

:colorscheme limei

Configuration

require("limei").setup({
  transparent = false,
  terminal_colors = true,
  matching = {
    brackets = true,
    quotes = true,
    string_delimiters = true,
  },

  styles = {
    comments = { italic = false },
    keywords = { italic = false },
    functions = { bold = false },
    variables = {},
  },

  palette = {},
  highlights = {},
})

vim.cmd.colorscheme("limei")

Configuration is reset to defaults on every setup() call. Reapply the colorscheme after changing it.

Matching pairs

For asymmetric pairs such as parentheses, square brackets, braces, and angle brackets, Neovim’s built-in matching system emphasizes both endpoints. Limei adds <:> to matchpairs without replacing existing entries and loads that runtime matcher when matching.brackets is enabled, even when a plugin manager has omitted it from startup.

For Tree-sitter-aware same-character delimiters, Limei emphasizes the opening and closing spans of single quotes, double quotes, backticks, and triple quotes. Unsupported or incomplete syntax is left untouched rather than guessed. Ordinary cursor movement performs no Tree-sitter query unless the cursor is on or immediately after a quote-like character.

Matching emphasis uses the muted warning foreground with bold text. Limei adds no background, underline, or undercurl. Disable quote extmarks with matching.quotes = false; disable Limei’s built-in matcher activation with matching.brackets = false.

Static quote coloring follows parser captures only. Neovim's bundled Lua and C queries include their quotes in the complete @string capture, so those literals remain coherently sage; Markdown exposes fenced-code delimiters but does not expose inline-code delimiters as a string-specific capture. Limei does not scan buffer text or add per-character extmarks to manufacture a static quote distinction. matching.string_delimiters remains accepted for configuration compatibility but currently has no effect.

Escapes and special string content use the canonical navigation role when a parser exposes them separately. Active quote matching remains independent: it uses the cursor-triggered bold pair emphasis described above.

Transparency and split presentation

require("limei").setup({
  transparent = true,
})

Transparency removes only editor canvas backgrounds. Popups and menus remain opaque for readability. Active and inactive editing windows share the same background; focus remains visible through the cursor, cursor line, current line number, statusline, and winbar. Split separators use a thin foreground-only line that is darker than the editor background.

The deprecated dim_inactive option is still accepted for compatibility but no longer changes any highlight.

Oil directories

Ordinary Oil directory icons and directory names both inherit Directory, so they render as one visual unit. File-type icons retain their useful individual colors, while Git and diagnostic states may still override the directory color when communicating a real state.

Palette overrides

require("limei").setup({
  palette = {
    bg = "#0e0e0e",
    callable = "#99887b",
  },
})

The resolved palette is available through require("limei").get_palette(). Legacy v0.x palette role names remain accepted where practical.

Generated terminal themes

Limei ships generated themes for Alacritty, Foot, Ghostty, Kitty, WezTerm, and Windows Terminal under extras/. They use the same palette and ANSI mapping as Neovim's terminal colors.

After changing palette.lua, regenerate every external theme with:

make extras

make check fails when a generated theme is stale.

Highlight overrides

Use a table:

require("limei").setup({
  highlights = {
    Comment = { fg = "#706c66", italic = true },
  },
})

Or a function:

require("limei").setup({
  highlights = function(colors)
    return {
      CursorLineNr = { fg = colors.warning, bold = true },
    }
  end,
})

User highlight overrides always run last.

Plugin support

Dedicated grouped highlights cover the visible interfaces in the project’s tested environment:

• Blink, blink-cmp-words, and nvim-cmp
• Telescope, fzf-lua, and fzf-oil
• Oil, Neo-tree, nvim-tree, Yazi, oil-git, and oil-lsp-diagnostics
• Gitsigns, Diffview, Neogit, Gitgraph, and Undotree
• Aerial, nvim-navic, Lspsaga, Fidget, Glance, Trouble, Tiny Inline Diagnostic, symbol-usage, and Quicker
• nvim-dap and nvim-dap-ui
• Neotest, Overseer, and Leetcode
• CodeCompanion
• indent-blankline.nvim and Mini Indentscope, Starter, Hipatterns, and Surround
• render-markdown.nvim 8.13 and CSVView
• Snacks picker, explorer, dashboard, notifier, input, terminal, indent, and diff
• lazy.nvim, Mason, WhichKey, Noice, Notify, lualine, Slimline, Bufferline, Satellite, virt-column.nvim, and ToggleTerm
• Flash, todo-comments, grug-far, Marks, Harpoon, Yanky, hardtime, Haunt, and nvim-ufo

Plugins without dedicated highlight groups inherit standard editor, syntax, diagnostic, diff, popup, and floating-window groups. No plugin is required at theme load time. Support claims are limited to groups verified against the locally installed plugin versions.

Development

make format
make check
make test
make specimen

make check runs StyLua and the palette/semantic audit. make test loads the theme headlessly in default, transparent, override, and reload configurations. make specimen opens a deterministic visual reference containing the neutral hierarchy, semantic identities, states, surfaces, and interaction highlights. See :help limei.nvim for concise in-editor documentation.

Design lineage

The grayscale-first restraint is inspired by nendix/zen.nvim, while the pigment relationships take broad inspiration from Gruvbox. The palette, implementation, semantic model, and integrations are original to limei.nvim.