tinct generates a Material Design 3 (Material You) palette from a seed colour, a theme JSON file, or a wallpaper image, then injects it into template files to produce themed configuration files. Light and dark themes are both supported.

• Material You palettes — built with the official MD3 algorithms from a single seed.
• Three colour sources — --seed <hex>, --theme <file>, or --image <wallpaper>.
• Scheme selection — --scheme-type picks the variant for every source: tonal-spot, vibrant, faithful, muted, dysfunctional, content, fruit-salad, rainbow, monochrome. For images it also selects the extraction pipeline.
• Input-aware terminal palette — the 16 ANSI colours are derived from your input via a wallust-inspired CIE LCh pipeline, not a fixed rainbow.
• Parallel template injection with per-template output paths and optional post-hooks.
• Preview mode — -p prints the palette instead of writing files.
• TOML configuration — every option is optional; a commented default config is generated on first run.

git clone https://github.com/lonerOrz/tinct.git
cd tinct
cargo build --release

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
    flake-utils.url = "github:numtide/flake-utils";
    tinct.url = "github:lonerOrz/tinct";
  };

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, flake-utils, tinct }:
    flake-utils.lib.eachDefaultSystem (system:
      let pkgs = import nixpkgs { inherit system; };
      in {
        devShells.default = pkgs.mkShell {
          packages = [ tinct.packages.${system}.tinct ];
        };
      });
}

Exactly one of --theme, --seed, --image is required.

tinct --theme MyTheme              # theme.json path or name in themes/
tinct --seed "#7aa2f7"             # generate from a seed colour
tinct --image wallpaper.png        # extract colours from a wallpaper
tinct -t TokyoNight -m light -p    # preview the light palette

The config file lives at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tinct/config.toml (fallback ~/.config/tinct/config.toml) and holds template definitions plus algorithm, image, and terminal tuning. Every key has a built-in default, so a partial config — or none of the optional sections — is valid.

On first run, if the default config is missing, tinct writes a fully commented default there, prints its path, and exits. An explicit --config <path> that does not exist is an error: tinct never writes to a path you did not ask for.

Relative input_path / output_path values resolve against the config file's directory, so behaviour is identical regardless of the working directory. ~ is expanded.

[templates.alacritty]
input_path = "~/.config/tinct/templates/alacritty.toml"
output_path = "~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.toml"
post_hook = "echo 'Alacritty theme injected successfully!'"

[templates.waybar]
input_path = "~/.config/tinct/templates/waybar.css"
output_path = "~/.config/waybar/style.css"
post_hook = "killall -SIGUSR2 waybar"

[algorithm]
hue_shift = 0
saturation_adjustment = 0
contrast_level = 0.0

These parameters only nudge the seed. Every secondary/tertiary/neutral/error relationship comes from the selected MD3 scheme, which is what keeps the output faithful to Material You.

color_harmony (analogous, complementary, …) is deprecated and ignored — the old hue-table relationships were not part of MD3. Use --scheme-type / [image].scheme_type instead.

The selected scheme is also used to generate the palette:

[image]
scheme_type = "tonal-spot"

Scheme precedence: CLI --scheme-type > [image].scheme_type > tonal-spot. variant_dark / variant_light then override that base for the respective mode.

The resolved scheme applies to every source — seeds and theme files too, not just images. For the non-M3 names the name does double duty; e.g. --image w.png --scheme-type faithful extracts area-dominant colours then builds the Fidelity palette, while --seed "#6750A4" --scheme-type faithful skips extraction and builds Fidelity directly.

UI/MD3 roles are always pure Material You. A terminal needs 16 recognizable colours, so the ANSI palette is generated separately with a CIE LCh pipeline in the spirit of wallust (MIT © explosion-mental):

[ansi]
palette = "dark"
source_weight = 0.6667
chroma_threshold = 12.0
brightness_delta = 8.0
bright_chroma_multiplier = 1.2
contrast_target = 3.0
# [ansi.anchors]   # power-user: override individual hue anchors, e.g. red = "#E06C75"

Setting contrast_target = 0.0 disables the contrast nudge; source_weight = 0.0 reproduces fixed, wallust-like anchors. All values are clamped to their valid range.

The chromatic slots come from your input, not a fixed palette:

Each candidate snaps to the chromatic slot whose hue range contains it (red 0–60°, yellow 61–120°, green 121–180°, cyan 181–210°, blue 211–300°, magenta 301–360°). The slot keeps the source hue and blends its chroma/lightness with the slot's vivid anchor using wallust's (anchor + 2·average) / 3 weighting. A slot with no matching candidate falls back to the full anchor, so a monochrome input never collapses into a washed-out palette. Near-neutral candidates are ignored, and each is consumed by at most one slot.

• black / bright_black / white / bright_white — a greyscale ladder from the scheme's neutral palette, so backgrounds and text always match the mode.
• red … cyan — the six chromatic slots described above.
• bright_* — the same hue as their normal counterpart, but lighter and higher chroma, so they read as vivid emphasis rather than muddy.

Every chromatic slot is gamut-mapped back to sRGB and then nudged in lightness until it clears the contrast_target against the terminal background.

A theme is a JSON file. Three shapes are accepted; names are case-insensitive ("primary" or "Primary").

Seed only (simplest):

{ "seed": "#7aa2f7" }

Overrides only — Primary is used as the seed:

{ "Primary": "#7aa2f7", "Secondary": "#bb9af7", "Tertiary": "#9ece6a" }

Seed + overrides (recommended):

{
  "seed": "#7aa2f7",
  "Primary": "#7aa2f7",
  "Secondary": "#bb9af7",
  "Tertiary": "#9ece6a",
  "Error": "#f7768e",
  "Surface": "#1a1b26",
  "Background": "#1a1b26"
}

seed sets the generation seed; any other key overrides the generated role.

Placeholders use the form {{colors.<role>.<mode>.<attribute>}}, plus the mode helpers below.

MD3 / UI roles (pure Material You):

• primary family — primary, on_primary, primary_container, on_primary_container
• secondary family — secondary, on_secondary, secondary_container, on_secondary_container
• tertiary family — tertiary, on_tertiary, tertiary_container, on_tertiary_container
• error family — error, on_error, error_container, on_error_container
• background — background, on_background
• surface — surface, on_surface, surface_variant, on_surface_variant, surface_dim, surface_bright, surface_container_lowest, surface_container_low, surface_container, surface_container_high, surface_container_highest
• inverse — inverse_surface, inverse_on_surface, inverse_primary
• outline — outline, outline_variant
• other — shadow, scrim

Terminal ANSI roles — the 16 slots described in Terminal palette (ANSI): black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, and their bright_* counterparts.

Syntax: do not put whitespace directly after the pipe. Use {{colors.primary.default.rgba|set_alpha:0.5}}, not | set_alpha.

For transparency you can also format the channels manually:

.semi-transparent-overlay {
  background-color: rgba(
    {{colors.surface.default.red}},
    {{colors.surface.default.green}},
    {{colors.surface.default.blue}},
    0.8
  );
}

• {{mode}} → "dark" or "light"
• {{is_dark}} → "true" or "false"
• {{is_light}} → "true" or "false"

.primary-button {
    background-color: {{colors.primary.default.hex}};
    color: {{colors.on_primary.default.hex}};
}

.accent-element {
    background-color: {{colors.tertiary.default.hsl}};
}

.styled-border {
    border-color: #{{colors.outline.default.hex_stripped}};
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: {{mode}}) {
    body {
        background-color: {{colors.background.default.hex}};
    }
}

BSD 3-Clause License.

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