sapling-theme.nvim

A Neovim colorscheme you grow yourself.

Start from any base colorscheme (or Neovim's default) and override highlight groups via setup() to make it your own. Built with lush.nvim, so you can use :Lushify for live color editing when you're ready to go deeper.

Requirements

• Neovim >= 0.9
• lush.nvim (optional — for live editing with :Lushify)

Installation

lazy.nvim

{
  "LevNas/sapling-theme.nvim",
  dependencies = { "rktjmp/lush.nvim" },
  lazy = false,
  priority = 1000,
  config = function()
    require("sapling-theme").setup({})
    vim.cmd.colorscheme("sapling-theme")
  end,
}

Configuration

Call setup() before loading the colorscheme. All options are optional.

require("sapling-theme").setup({
  -- Base colorscheme loaded first (default: "default")
  base = "tokyonight",
  -- Your color palette (stored for external reference, e.g. statusline)
  palette = {
    red = "#ff6188",
    green = "#a9dc76",
  },
  -- Highlight overrides (passed to nvim_set_hl)
  highlights = {
    Comment = { fg = "#888888", italic = true },
    Function = { fg = "#66d9ef", bold = true },
  },
})
vim.cmd.colorscheme("sapling-theme")

Base colorscheme

Set base to load an existing colorscheme first. Your highlights are then applied on top, so any groups you don't override inherit from the base. Defaults to "default" (Neovim built-in).

require("sapling-theme").setup({ base = "tokyonight" })

Highlight overrides

The highlights table maps group names to attribute tables accepted by vim.api.nvim_set_hl(). These are applied after the base colorscheme.

Tip: Reference palette colors via a local variable

Define your palette as a local variable and reference it in both palette and highlights. This keeps colors in sync and gives you type safety — a typo like p.bluee becomes nil and is caught immediately, unlike a plain string.

config = function()
  local p = {
    blue   = "#808bed",
    green  = "#cff7d1",
    red    = "#f7768e",
    teal   = "#73daca",
    -- ...
  }

  require("sapling-theme").setup({
    palette = p,
    highlights = {
      Function = { fg = p.blue, bold = true },
      Type     = { fg = p.teal },
      Error    = { fg = p.red },
    },
  })
  vim.cmd.colorscheme("sapling-theme")
end

For a full working configuration, see examples/colortheme.lua.

Growing further with Lushify

Once you want to go beyond highlight overrides, you can create your own lush spec and edit colors interactively:

1. Create a lush spec file (see the lush tutorial)
2. Open the file and run :Lushify
3. Edit colors and see changes reflected in real time

Save and close the file when you are done — Lushify stops automatically.

License

MIT