Slatewave

Contributing

How to add a new theme or propose changes to the Slatewave palette.

Slatewave is a small system; contribution should feel small too. There are three kinds of contributions:

1. Fix or extend an existing theme

Each theme lives in its own repo. Open an issue or PR there:

Keep changes aligned with the palette spec. A PR that uses teal for something that isn’t a signal (focus, selection, CTA) is unlikely to land.

2. Port Slatewave to a new tool

Before you start:

  1. Read the design principles
  2. Read the palette spec and understand the semantic role and syntax token maps
  3. Make sure the target tool has a theme extension model — Slatewave should work without patching the app itself

Then:

  1. Create a new public repo named <tool>-slatewave or slatewave-<tool>
  2. Mirror the palette via the role mapping, not raw values
  3. Add a src/content/themes/<slug>.mdx entry here via PR

3. Propose a palette change

The palette itself rarely changes. When it does, the change is proposed and applied in vscode-slatewave first — that’s the source of truth. Once merged there, downstream themes and this site update to match.

Palette PRs need to articulate:

  • What role is changing and why
  • The before/after contrast ratio against the relevant backgrounds
  • How the change propagates to each existing theme

Website changes

This site lives at github.com/kevinlangleyjr/getslatewave. Run locally:

pnpm install
pnpm dev

New themes are added by creating src/content/themes/<slug>.mdx. The schema is defined in src/content.config.ts — follow an existing theme as a template.