Border-City

Obsidian theme: Velocity chrome (workspace, tabs, sidebar, modals, mobile, colors) + Border markdown (headings, lists, tables, callouts, code, checkboxes, embeds).

Needs Obsidian 1.13+ and the Style Settings plugin for the tunable options.

Install

1. Build first: cd border-city && npm install && npm run build (needs Node 18+).
2. Inside <vault>/.obsidian/themes/ make a folder named exactly Border City (must match manifest.json "name"; any other folder name hides the theme from the selector). Copy only border-city/manifest.json + border-city/theme.css into it. Copying the whole repo folder does not work, it holds build sources.
3. Same for any variant you want: each gets its own folder named exactly as its manifest (Border City - Fluent, Border City - Material, Border City - Liquid), holding only that variant's manifest.json + theme.css (built into border-city-fluent/, border-city-material/, border-city-liquid/; rename on copy).
4. Pick Border City under Settings → Appearance → Themes.

Variants (experimental)

Base is the stable theme. The three variants are experiments: each is base theme.css plus one small token layer, borrowing look-and-feel values from one component project. No JS from those projects ships, CSS only, and the markdown render stays Border in all three.

• Fluent — values from fluentui: Segoe UI stack, small rectangular corners, flat controls, underline active tab, acrylic overlays.
• Material — values from material-web: Roboto, pill buttons and toggles, 3px tab indicator, tonal surfaces, elevated sheets.
• Liquid — values inspired by liquidGL: backdrop blur on overlays and leaf containers, translucent surfaces, squircle corners. Real refraction needs WebGL, which themes cannot ship, so this is an approximation.

Expect rough edges on all three. Bug reports against base get priority.

Screenshots

border-city/screenshots/ renders all four themes × light/dark from fixture.html (npm run screenshots, needs a Chromium binary). Covers tabs, sidebar, modal, prose, tables, code, callouts, tasks, embeds, and the Style Settings slider row. Outputs stay git-ignored.

Layout

• border-city/: the merged theme. theme.css is built, never hand-edited. build.mjs regenerates it from the vendored sources below.
• border-city-fluent/, border-city-material/, border-city-liquid/: variant themes, emitted by the build, git-ignored.
• obsidian-velocity-master/: upstream Velocity source (Floodlight).
• obsidian-border-main/: upstream Border source (Akifyss).
• AGENTS.md: working rules for agents (rebuild, edit policy, tradeoffs).

Rebuild

cd border-city && npm install && npm run build

Credits

• Velocity by Floodlight (workspace look, colors)
• Border by Akifyss (markdown render)

Upstream licenses ship in their folders.