feat(palette): 2.0.0 retune — neutrals, comments, ANSI, accents, CVD; verifier hard-fail

[crypticpy]

Summary

PR 3 of the audit-remediation plan (docs/plans/2026-08-18-audit-remediation.md). First palette change since 1.0 → 2.0.0. All edits are in themes/_src/variants/*.yaml (+ one tokenized key in base.yaml) and mirrored into the four terminal/ files. The verifier's perceptual checks introduced in #10 (APCA floors, CVD confusability, ANSI ΔE2000, tight-gap, whole-theme wavelength scan) are flipped to hard failures and the shipped palette passes all of them with zero warnings.

Standard / Focused (Soft gets the same transforms scaled — see CHANGELOG for its hexes):

• Neutrals lose blue-subpixel drive — foreground/operator/punctuation grays shifted at constant L* with the B channel pulled down 10–20 hex (#C4B8A4→#C8B89A, #D4C8B8→#D8C8A8, #E8DCD0→#EDDCC4, …).
• Comments #5C544A→#6E665B (APCA Lc 16 → 23, WCAG 2.7 → 3.5); doc comments →#787062; line numbers →#56504A.
• Ghost text ≠ comments — fg #6B635A + faint translucent bg (editorGhostText.background, newly tokenized in base.yaml). Ghost italic is VS Code CSS, not themable.
• Badge / remote fills #D4A048→#A87C34 (buttons, focus border, cursor keep gold).
• *.defaultLibrary + this/self/super #B89860→#B08C50 — one real L* step below Types.
• Numbers #E0A850→#DEA64E so Variables→Numbers clears the 3 L* tight-gap floor.
• Parameters #BCA890→#B8AA9C — CVD vs Variables 4.7 → 6.6 (separation on the b* axis red-green observers keep).
• Soft Functions #9A6D53→#976D56 (Soft Types/Functions CVD 5.7).
• ANSI blue #9C948E (warm gray, Lc 45) / cyan #C08868 (terracotta = Functions); bright slots #B2AAA3 / #CEA284. Normal-8 pairwise ΔE2000 min 13.6 (was 5.2). Deviates from the plan's proposed #B09878/#C0A888 — two warm grays can't reach ΔE ≥ 10 at usable Lc, so cyan reuses an existing chromatic hex instead.
• POLICY in scripts/verify-palette.mjs: every check fail. Tight-gap rule unchanged (L* < 3 or ΔE2000 < 4 fails).
• tests/pipeline.test.mjs: v1.2.0 snapshot test now asserts structural parity (keys, rules, scopes, font styles) instead of hex equality; PALETTE_CHANGED gate removed.
• README verifier blocks re-rendered; ladder prose made non-literal (Sourcery's drift comment on feat: verifier v2 (APCA, ΔE2000, CVD, ANSI, wavelength scan, README tables) + tests + CI #10); terminal section documents the new blue/cyan.
• CHANGELOG [2.0.0] (folds the feat: verifier v2 (APCA, ΔE2000, CVD, ANSI, wavelength scan, README tables) + tests + CI #10 Unreleased entry); package.json 2.0.0.

themes/_snapshot/ is untouched (immutable v1.2.0 reference).

Verification

• npm run check → ✓ all checks passed (0 failures, 0 warnings across Alone / Focused / Soft).
• npm test → 26/26.
• npx vsce package → 14 files, 50.7 KB.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Summary by Sourcery

Ship the 2.0.0 palette retune with stronger perceptual validation and warmer, more distinguishable colors across editor and terminal themes.

New Features:

• Retune the shipped Alone, Alone Focused, and Alone Soft palettes with warmer neutrals, clearer comments and ghost text, refined accents, and more distinguishable ANSI colors.
• Add a tokenized ghost-text background and publish the palette as version 2.0.0.

Bug Fixes:

• Improve readability and perceptual separation for comments, numbers, parameters, default-library symbols, and terminal ANSI colors across accessibility and color-vision checks.

Enhancements:

• Make APCA, CVD, ANSI contrast, tight-gap, and wavelength-scan verifier checks hard failures.
• Preserve immutable snapshot coverage through structural parity checks while allowing intentional palette value changes.

Documentation:

• Update the README and changelog with the retuned syntax, contrast, ANSI, and verification information.

Tests:

• Update pipeline tests to validate structural snapshot coverage instead of exact color equality.

Chores:

• Mirror the retuned palette across generated themes and terminal color schemes.

[sourcery-ai]

Reviewer's Guide

Palette 2.0.0 retune that warms neutrals, raises comment/ghost/line-number contrast, reworks ANSI blue/cyan and accents, and tightens verification/tests so all perceptual checks are now hard failures. All user-visible changes are in the YAML variants and mirrored terminal schemes; tests and verifier now treat v1.2.0 JSON as a structural reference rather than hex snapshot.

File-Level Changes

Change	Details	Files
Warm-neutral palette retune across Alone / Focused / Soft variants, including comments, parameters, numbers, ghost text, and UI neutrals.	Shifted core neutral foreground, operator, punctuation, and UI grays (variables, properties, punctuation, UI chrome) from slightly blue-tinted values to warmer hexes at roughly constant L* to remove blue-subpixel drive while preserving contrast. Raised comment/CodeLens/line-number tones and ANSI bright-black to meet APCA/WCAG floors; comments and documentation comments now differ in hex and L*, and comments remain visually de-emphasized but above the non-essential text floor. Adjusted numbers and parameter colors so Variables→Numbers and Variables→Parameters clear the tight-gap ΔE/L* constraints while remaining harmonized with the rest of the syntax ladder. Introduced distinct ghost-text foreground plus new tokenized editorGhostText.background, and wired it via base.yaml so inline suggestions are perceptually distinct from comments and body text in all variants. Tweaked Soft variant neutrals and soft functions to mirror the main palette moves with scaled deltas, maintaining CVD separation for Types/Functions and other tight pairs.	themes/_src/variants/alone.yaml themes/_src/variants/alone-focused.yaml themes/_src/variants/alone-soft.yaml themes/_src/base.yaml
Accent and ANSI palette adjustments, applied consistently to VS Code themes and terminal schemes.	Dimmed solid accent fills for badges and remote indicators from bright gold to a darker gold while keeping buttons, focus borders, and cursor unchanged, reducing large bright UI blocks without harming affordance. Replaced previous near-identical warm-gray ANSI blue/cyan pair with a warm-gray blue and terracotta cyan, and updated corresponding bright/dim slots to ensure ΔE2000 ≥ 10 among all normal ANSI colors and improved readability on black backgrounds. Mirrored the new foreground, blue, cyan, white, and bright-black/white ANSI values into Alacritty, Kitty, iTerm2, and Windows Terminal theme files, including dim palettes where present. Updated README documentation for the syntax ladder, syntax color table, ANSI table, and contrast examples to reflect new hex values and to describe the new blue/cyan strategy in text.	themes/_src/variants/alone.yaml themes/_src/variants/alone-focused.yaml themes/_src/variants/alone-soft.yaml terminal/alone.toml terminal/alone.conf terminal/alone.itermcolors terminal/alone-windows-terminal.json README.md
Verifier policy tightened so perceptual checks hard-fail, with README regeneration and structural test expectations updated accordingly.	Changed verify-palette POLICY configuration so all perceptual checks (tight gaps, APCA floors, CVD separation, ANSI ΔE, wavelength scan) are treated as fail-level, and updated header comments to reflect 2.0.0 semantics. Switched base.yaml editorGhostText.background from a hard-coded transparent black to a token reference so each variant can supply its ghost background color while keeping the mapping centralized. Reworked the pipeline snapshot test to compare structural shape (keys, tokenColors rules, semantic selectors, font styles) between current themes and the immutable v1.2.0 snapshot instead of enforcing hex equality, and removed the PALETTE_CHANGED gate/skip flag. Ensured README verifier-generated sections remain the single source of truth by rerunning verify-palette with --write-readme and tightening the readme drift policy to fail on mismatches. Bumped package.json version to 2.0.0 and updated CHANGELOG with a detailed 2.0.0 entry describing both palette retune and verifier/test pipeline behavior changes; package-lock and built themes JSON updated by the build pipeline.	scripts/verify-palette.mjs themes/_src/base.yaml tests/pipeline.test.mjs README.md CHANGELOG.md package.json package-lock.json themes/alone-color-theme.json themes/alone-focused-color-theme.json themes/alone-soft-color-theme.json

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[sourcery-ai]

Hey - I've left some high level feedback:

• The new structural parity test still depends on the exact tokenColors array order, so any future reordering of rules (even if semantically equivalent) will fail the test; consider normalizing/sorting tokenColors (e.g. by name/scope) before comparison so the check is order-insensitive but still guards scope/fontStyle drift.
• shape(theme).colors currently enforces an exact color-key set match with the v1.2.0 snapshot, which will flag intentional additions like new VS Code color keys; you might want to allow supersets (e.g. assert that snapshot keys are a subset of built keys) so the test doesn’t block forward compatibility.
• Since all verifier checks are now hard failures, it may be worth adding a short-lived override mechanism (e.g. an env flag) instead of requiring POLICY edits when experimenting with in-flight palette changes, to reduce the chance of accidentally committing relaxed policies.

Prompt for AI Agents

Please address the comments from this code review:

## Overall Comments
- The new structural parity test still depends on the exact `tokenColors` array order, so any future reordering of rules (even if semantically equivalent) will fail the test; consider normalizing/sorting `tokenColors` (e.g. by `name`/`scope`) before comparison so the check is order-insensitive but still guards scope/fontStyle drift.
- `shape(theme).colors` currently enforces an exact color-key set match with the v1.2.0 snapshot, which will flag intentional additions like new VS Code color keys; you might want to allow supersets (e.g. assert that snapshot keys are a subset of built keys) so the test doesn’t block forward compatibility.
- Since all verifier checks are now hard failures, it may be worth adding a short-lived override mechanism (e.g. an env flag) instead of requiring `POLICY` edits when experimenting with in-flight palette changes, to reduce the chance of accidentally committing relaxed policies.

---

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[chatgpt-codex-connector]

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[chatgpt-codex-connector]

Preserve semantic token style flags in snapshot shape

Record the actual semantic-token style properties rather than fontStyle. The generated themes represent these styles as italic, bold, underline, and strikethrough booleans (for example, comment has italic: true and keyword has bold: true), so every current object maps to null here. Consequently, a future change that silently removes or alters a semantic selector's visual style will still pass this structural-parity test despite the stated invariant.

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[crypticpy]

Good catch — fixed in 244a3d0: the shape now records the italic/bold/underline/strikethrough flags (16 styled selectors in the snapshot are now actually compared).

[crypticpy]

Re Sourcery review 4958052317:

• Order-sensitive / exact-set snapshot test: fixed in 214a950 — the test now compares name-keyed rule signatures and colour-key membership (snapshot ⊆ built), so reordering and additions pass while drops/restyles still fail.
• Env-flag override for POLICY: leaving as-is. A POLICY edit shows up in the diff and gets reviewed; an env var can relax the gate in CI or a shell without any trace in the repo, which is the failure mode we want to avoid. The header comment documents the intended flow (demote to warn in the PR that changes the palette, restore in the same PR).