feat(caelestia): pick the scheme in caelestia, recolour the desktop live #4

Merged

hutao merged 17 commits from feat/event-driven-colors into main 2026-09-26 21:24:50 +00:00

Conversation 0 Commits 17 Files changed 28 +1113 -442

hutao commented 2026-09-26 19:56:09 +00:00

Owner

Copy link

What

The colour scheme is now picked in caelestia's own picker, and the desktop follows the pick live. hu-tao/red is a caelestia scheme like any other, and dynamic works too.

• Live on a switch: kitty, tmux, Neovim, waybar, mako, Hyprland's borders, Vesktop, starship and the Claude Code status line. caelestia renders each app's config from a template into $XDG_STATE_HOME/caelestia/theme/, and the app's path links there. caelestia-theme-hook then tells each running app to reload.
• At next launch: GTK and Qt apps, through caelestia's own appliers. caelestia now owns them instead of stylix. Qt runs on qtengine with Darkly, in JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Light.
• At the next rebuild: grub, plymouth, the tty and SDDM. The hook records the pick in dotfiles/caelestia/current.json, and for dynamic the generated colours in dynamic.txt. palette.nix builds from those. The hook finds the checkout through $XDG_STATE_HOME/hutao/flake-path, which is written from hutao.flakePath.

Also in here

• fcitx5 drops its Qt 5 frontend, the only thing still pulling in Qt 5 (3cdd346, from main, not yet on origin).
• Fixes found while testing:
  • The activation's shell restart works again.
  • tmux recolours workmux's windows, through cli-utils, with the lock updated.
  • The current tmux window and the prompt's directory are readable on generated schemes.
  • Links left over from the old whole-directory home.file entries are removed before relinking.
• kitty and Evolution are more opaque, for light schemes.

Testing

• Built and switched on hutao-desktop.
• Switched between hu-tao/red, dynamic, light and dark, and hard; checked recolouring by eye.
• The rendered templates match the previous build's baked files byte for byte.
• nix develop -c pre-commit run --all-files passes, including the book.

The handbook's colours chapter (docs/src/architecture/colours.md) describes the design.

## What The colour scheme is now picked in caelestia's own picker, and the desktop follows the pick live. `hu-tao/red` is a caelestia scheme like any other, and `dynamic` works too. - **Live on a switch:** kitty, tmux, Neovim, waybar, mako, Hyprland's borders, Vesktop, starship and the Claude Code status line. caelestia renders each app's config from a template into `$XDG_STATE_HOME/caelestia/theme/`, and the app's path links there. `caelestia-theme-hook` then tells each running app to reload. - **At next launch:** GTK and Qt apps, through caelestia's own appliers. caelestia now owns them instead of stylix. Qt runs on qtengine with Darkly, in JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Light. - **At the next rebuild:** grub, plymouth, the tty and SDDM. The hook records the pick in `dotfiles/caelestia/current.json`, and for `dynamic` the generated colours in `dynamic.txt`. `palette.nix` builds from those. The hook finds the checkout through `$XDG_STATE_HOME/hutao/flake-path`, which is written from `hutao.flakePath`. ## Also in here - `fcitx5` drops its Qt 5 frontend, the only thing still pulling in Qt 5 (`3cdd346`, from `main`, not yet on origin). - Fixes found while testing: - The activation's shell restart works again. - tmux recolours workmux's windows, through cli-utils, with the lock updated. - The current tmux window and the prompt's directory are readable on generated schemes. - Links left over from the old whole-directory `home.file` entries are removed before relinking. - kitty and Evolution are more opaque, for light schemes. ## Testing - Built and switched on hutao-desktop. - Switched between `hu-tao/red`, `dynamic`, light and dark, and hard; checked recolouring by eye. - The rendered templates match the previous build's baked files byte for byte. - `nix develop -c pre-commit run --all-files` passes, including the book. The handbook's colours chapter (`docs/src/architecture/colours.md`) describes the design.

hutao added 12 commits 2026-09-26 19:56:09 +00:00

chore(fcitx5): drop the Qt 5 frontend ... 3cdd346ffc

fcitx5-with-addons bundles libsForQt5.fcitx5-qt unconditionally, and it
was what pulled Qt 5 into the system. There are no Qt 5 apps for it to
serve, and Qt 5 is close to end of life. The Qt 6 and GTK frontends stay.

An overlay rather than i18n.inputMethod.package, because the module also
puts its own copy of the package on QT_PLUGIN_PATH.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(caelestia): pick the scheme in caelestia, recolour the desktop live ... fe61cafe5c

The scheme moves to hu-tao/red/dark.txt and ships inside an overridden
caelestia CLI, the only place the CLI lists schemes from, so it finally
shows up in the picker. The shell drops its bundled CLI for the one on
PATH, or every scheme edit would be a C++ rebuild.

caelestia-theme-hook, as theme.postHook, records each pick in
dotfiles/caelestia/current.json, and dynamic's generated colours in
dynamic.txt, in the checkout named by hutao.flakePath. palette.nix builds
from that, so a rebuild brings grub, plymouth, the tty and SDDM to the
scheme on screen.

Every dotfile with a colour in it becomes a caelestia template, rendered
on each switch and at activation, with its path linked to the rendered
file; the hook reloads kitty, waybar, mako, tmux and Hyprland. caelestia
owns GTK and Qt: stylix's gtk and qt targets are off, Qt is qtengine with
Darkly, and kdeglobals is a template too.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(nvim): hot-reload the colours from caelestia's scheme ... 1f73643952

utils/colors.lua reads $XDG_STATE_HOME/caelestia/scheme.json, falling
back to its literals, and watches it; catppuccin re-applies on a switch,
recompiling off its own options hash. lualine's theme is a function so
its ColorScheme autocmd rebuilds it, and Alpha's groups move into the
catppuccin overrides so the reload does not clear them.

The build-time recolour in neovim.nix goes, and with it the cache purge
that only existed because that recolour kept file sizes and mtimes still.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs(handbook): colours follow the scheme picked in caelestia ... 6f5279331b

Rewrites the colours chapter around the picker, the templates and the
hook, and says what follows a switch at once, at next launch and only
after a rebuild. The user-layer chapter and the README follow.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(caelestia): set the Qt font to JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Light ... 7de485db3f

caelestia's qtengine template hardcodes Sans Serif and Monospace at 12,
and it rewrites qtengine's config.json from that template on every
switch, so the CLI override patches the template itself: stylix's
monospace font at the applications size, weight 300, which qtengine hands
to QFont as QFont::Light.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

fix(home): drop a directory link the walk now expands before relinking ... 02202eec9b

Making kitty, waybar, mako and the rest templates expands their
directories, which the old generation linked whole. home-manager keeps
such a link, since the new generation has a directory at that path, and
then fails writing entries into the read-only store directory under it.
Activation removes those links first, and only ones into a home-manager
generation.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

fix(caelestia): restart the shell through the CLI again ... 22dea39c8c

The shell package no longer bundles the CLI, so the activation's restart
called a caelestia binary that does not exist and the failure was
swallowed: the old shell kept running with the old CLI, whose scheme list
has no hu-tao. The standalone CLI runs it instead, with the shell package
on PATH, where the CLI looks for caelestia-shell.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(caelestia): reload Vesktop's theme on a switch ... f803fb0017

Vencord re-reads its themes on any event in their directory, and a switch
rewrites the file behind the symlinks, outside it, so it only caught up
when the theme was toggled or Vesktop restarted. The hook now touches the
links themselves, which is the event it waits for.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

chore(flake): update cli-utils for the live tmux recolour ... c4a67418fa

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

fix(hypr): make kitty and Evolution more opaque ... 617f2c5783

On a light scheme the wallpaper showing through washes their text out:
kitty goes from 0.93 to 0.98, Evolution from 0.85 to 0.95.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

feat(claude): take the status line's gradient from the scheme ... 328b6367b1

ccstatusline takes custom gradient stops and re-reads its settings on
every render, so its settings are now a caelestia template running from
primary to tertiary, in place of the fixed morning preset. The rendered
file is writable, so the picker can save over it again, but only until
the next switch.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

fix(home): draw the prompt's directory in onPrimary ... 061312e489

It sat in the scheme's text colour on primary, and a generated scheme
makes those two the same lightness in either mode, so the path washed out
on every dynamic pick. onPrimary is the colour the scheme makes for use on
primary.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

hutao added 5 commits 2026-09-26 20:54:56 +00:00

feat(caelestia): recolour Floorp live through CaelestiaFox ... 714e925b8c

The CaelestiaFox extension recolours the browser from what its native app
sends, scheme.json on start and on every switch, and does nothing without
it. Upstream ships that app only in an Arch package, so it is packaged
here from their repo, and Floorp's wrapper registers it through
nativeMessagingHosts, linking the manifest into
~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts when Floorp starts.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

fix(caelestia): start the shell through Hyprland after a rebuild ... c4d0d9c7a3

The restart ran `caelestia shell -d` from the activation service, whose
environment has QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen, so the new shell had no display,
failed to load its services and exited, leaving no shell until it was
started by hand. Hyprland starts it now, over `hyprctl eval`, with the
session's environment and the same command as autostart, which moves into
programs.lua as programs.shell so the two cannot drift. dofile rather than
require, so the eval reads the new file rather than a cached module.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

fix(caelestia): move the shell settings to upstream's option names ... e04b8302d9

The shell stopped reading perMonitorWorkspaces, useFahrenheit,
useFahrenheitPerformance and useTwelveHourClock and warned on every
start. They are perMonitor, weatherUnits, sensorUnits and clockFormat now,
set to what the old ones meant: Celsius and a 24-hour clock. The first VPN
provider was an empty entry, all nulls, that failed to decode; Tailscale
is the only real one.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs(handbook): the CaelestiaFox setup and the shell restart on rebuild ... cb3be016d7

Colours now says the extension comes from AMO by hand and that Floorp needs a
restart to pick up the native app, and lists Floorp and ccstatusline among
what follows a switch. The user layer explains why a rebuild has Hyprland
start the shell again, a gotcha from 2026-09-26. The README's pkgs line names
CaelestiaFox.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

style(caelestia): format the shell restart for nixfmt ... 78cdb02ef3

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

hutao added 1 commit 2026-09-26 20:58:25 +00:00

fix(caelestia): tint the lock screen's distro logo with the scheme ... 2f63b7b1b6

lock.recolourLogo was off, so the NixOS logo on the lock screen kept its
own blues through every switch. On, the shell draws it in primary, like
the rest of the lock screen.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

hutao merged commit b3acbe1d14 into main 2026-09-26 21:24:50 +00:00

hutao deleted branch feat/event-driven-colors 2026-09-26 21:24:50 +00:00

hutao referenced this pull request from a commit 2026-09-26 21:24:52 +00:00

Merge pull request 'feat(caelestia): pick the scheme in caelestia, recolour the desktop live' (#4) from feat/event-driven-colors into main

Sign in to join this conversation.

Reviewers

No reviewers

Labels

Clear labels

No items

No labels

Milestone

Clear milestone

No items

No milestone

Projects

Clear projects

No items

No project

Assignees

Clear assignees

No assignees

1 participant

Notifications

Subscribe

Due date

The due date is invalid or out of range. Please use the format "yyyy-mm-dd".

No due date set.

Dependencies

No dependencies set

Reference

hutao/nixos-dotfiles!4

No description provided.