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Themes (25 bundled palettes + auto)

Status: shipped in Phase 0.8 · Issue: #8

The Mark It Down renderer now ships 25 hand-curated theme palettes in addition to the original auto mode. Switching themes restyles markdown rendering, mermaid (in dark/light mode bucketing), and code highlight backgrounds — without restarting VSCode.

At a glance


Where	`markItDown.theme` setting · `Mark It Down: Pick Theme` command (Quick Pick)
Default	`auto` — the renderer uses VSCode's `--vscode-*` CSS variables, so it follows whatever theme you have active
Custom themes	25 palettes covering popular VSCode/editor themes — see the bundled set below
Apply mid-session	Open custom editors re-render automatically when the setting changes
Mermaid	Mermaid theme follows the bundled palette's `kind` (light or dark)

Bundled themes

ID	Label	Kind
`auto`	Auto (follows VSCode)	inherit
`github-light`	GitHub Light	light
`github-dark`	GitHub Dark	dark
`dracula`	Dracula	dark
`one-dark`	Atom One Dark	dark
`one-light`	Atom One Light	light
`monokai`	Monokai	dark
`solarized-light`	Solarized Light	light
`solarized-dark`	Solarized Dark	dark
`tokyo-night`	Tokyo Night	dark
`tokyo-night-light`	Tokyo Night Light	light
`ayu-light`	Ayu Light	light
`ayu-mirage`	Ayu Mirage	dark
`ayu-dark`	Ayu Dark	dark
`gruvbox-light`	Gruvbox Light	light
`gruvbox-dark`	Gruvbox Dark	dark
`nord`	Nord	dark
`nord-light`	Nord Light	light
`palenight`	Palenight	dark
`material-dark`	Material Dark	dark
`material-light`	Material Light	light
`night-owl`	Night Owl	dark
`cobalt2`	Cobalt 2	dark
`oceanic-next`	Oceanic Next	dark
`snazzy`	Hyper Snazzy	dark
`rose-pine`	Rosé Pine	dark

That's 25 palettes (15 dark, 10 light) + auto.

How it works

Each theme is a TypeScript object in src/themes/themes.ts with a 10-token palette:

When the user picks a non-auto theme, webviewBuilder.ts emits an extra <style> block:

css

The existing CSS rules already use var(--bg) etc., so the override propagates automatically — no per-element rewrites needed.

For auto, no override is emitted; the existing var(--vscode-*) fallbacks remain in effect.

How to switch themes

Two paths:

Quick Pick — Cmd+Shift+P → "Mark It Down: Pick Theme" → choose. The setting updates in the workspace (or globally if no folder is open).
Settings UI — Cmd+, → search "Mark It Down: Theme" → pick from the dropdown.
settings.json —

json

When the setting changes, every open Mark It Down custom editor reloads its webview HTML with the new theme. No VSCode restart needed. Tradeoff: re-loading the HTML resets in-progress edit-mode cursor position and scroll. For now this is the simplest correct behavior; finer-grained CSS variable swapping (without HTML reload) is a future-work seed.

Mermaid theme integration

Mermaid runs entirely inside the webview, with its own theme system (default / dark). The Mark It Down theme bridge maps each bundled theme's kind (light / dark) to one of those mermaid themes, so a flowchart in dracula mode renders dark-themed nodes against the dracula background.

When auto is selected, mermaid follows the VSCode color theme directly via the themeKind value the host sends in every update message.

Edge cases

Custom theme not found: typo in markItDown.theme (e.g. "draccula")? webviewBuilder.ts checks via findTheme(); if undefined, no override is emitted and the renderer falls back to auto. The data-theme attribute still records what the user typed for diagnostic purposes.
Theme switch resets cursor: changing the theme reloads the webview HTML, which destroys the CodeMirror EditorView. Cursor and selection in Edit mode are reset to position 0. Future work: live-swap CSS variables without rebuilding the HTML.
High-contrast themes: not yet bundled — VSCode's high-contrast modes are followed in auto. Adding hc-light / hc-dark palettes is a future addition.
Mermaid in light themes: mermaid's default theme looks fine on most light backgrounds; if a specific light bundled theme has poor contrast with mermaid edges, it's tracked as polish (not a blocker).
Theme syntax-highlighting tokens: as of #51, every theme also gets a per-token highlight.js palette. See the section below for how it's wired.

Per-token highlight.js palette (#51)

Every bundled theme gets a coherent code-highlight palette tuned against its chrome — keywords, strings, comments, types, fn names, regex, etc. all match the surrounding theme rather than sitting on top of a generic atom-one-dark base.

How it's derived

Default mapping from packages/core/src/themes/hljsCss.ts: keyword → palette.link, built-in → palette.accent, comment → palette.fgMuted, fn → palette.link, string → palette.linkHover, variable → palette.fg, etc.
Curated overrides per theme — github-light/dark, dracula, one-dark/light, monokai, solarized-light/dark, tokyo-night, nord, gruvbox-light/dark, rose-pine, cobalt2 — use the well-known community palettes for those ecosystems instead of the derived defaults.
All 25 themes resolve to a fully-populated HljsTokens object via hljsTokensFor(theme); hljsCssFor(theme) emits the matching CSS.

Where it lands

Webview: webviewBuilder.ts emits the per-theme block right after the existing chrome :root[data-theme=…] override. Marked still produces <span class="hljs-keyword"> etc.; our CSS overrides paint them.
Published site: buildSiteAssets(palette, kindIsDark, theme) appends the same per-theme rules after the bundled hljs base stylesheet, so deployed sites match local rendering.

Tradeoffs

25 themes ship hand-tuned for the marquee ones + algorithmic for the rest. The algorithmic mapping is correct but conservative — PRs to curate Ayu, Material, Night Owl, Oceanic Next, Snazzy, Palenight, Tokyo Night Light, Nord Light against their canonical token palettes are welcome.
The bundled hljs stylesheet (atom-one-dark for dark-kind, github for light-kind) still loads as a base; our per-theme rules override it. This costs ~2KB extra CSS but keeps the load path simple.

Why not `@orchestra-mcp/theme`?

The original spec mentioned bridging to @orchestra-mcp/theme for the 25-theme set. That package is a private aspirational reference that may or may not exist publicly; rather than block on it, F7 ships the 25 palettes directly inside this extension. If @orchestra-mcp/theme does become published, swapping in its tokens is a one-file change to src/themes/themes.ts — the rest of the bridge stays the same.

Files of interest

src/themes/themes.ts — 25 ThemeDefinition entries + findTheme + paletteToCss
src/editor/webviewBuilder.ts — emits the per-theme :root[data-theme=…] override block
src/editor/markdownEditorProvider.ts — resolveTheme returns the user's preference verbatim; onDidChangeConfiguration reloads the webview HTML on theme change
src/extension.ts — markItDown.pickTheme command (Quick Pick over THEMES)
package.json — markItDown.theme setting enum (25 values + auto); markItDown.pickTheme command registration