VimColorSchemes — Engineering Report

>_EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

VimColorSchemes is a single hand-curated bundle of 732 Vim colorschemes. Every file under colors/ is a self-contained .vim highlight script — a working :colorscheme target as soon as the directory is on runtimepath. There is no runtime, no autoload, no compiled artifact: the entire plugin is 125,715 lines of .vim across the 732 files (~6.3 MB on disk, avg 172 lines/scheme). It loads under Pathogen, vim-plug, packer, lazy.nvim, native Vim 8 packages, or a bare set rtp+=, in terminal Vim (256-color + truecolor), GUI Vim, and Neovim. The repo ships 4 CI test scripts that pin scheme count, file integrity, name hygiene, and headless load.

732

Colorschemes (colors/*.vim)

125,715

Total .vim Lines

6.3 MB

Bundle Size on Disk

172

Avg Lines / Scheme

657

Schemes with GUI Colors (guifg)

485

Schemes with Term Colors (ctermfg)

463

Declare background=dark

161

Declare background=light

CI Test Scripts

~STRUCTURE

The repo is data, not code: a flat colors/ directory of self-contained schemes plus a thin test/CI layer. Nothing is sourced at startup except the one scheme the user selects with :colorscheme.

Path	Count	Role
`colors/*.vim`	732	The bundle. Each file is a standalone Vim highlight script — `hi clear` / `syntax reset` preamble, `let g:colors_name='…'`, then a block of `:highlight` definitions (most branch on `has('gui_running')` / `&t_Co` / `&background`). 125,715 lines total, ~6.3 MB.
`tests/repo-contract.sh`	1	No-Vim repo gate. Pins the README `schemes-N` badge against the live `colors/` count; rejects empty / sub-10-byte files; rejects filenames with spaces or shell-unsafe characters; rejects duplicate basenames; reports `g:colors_name`-vs-filename mismatches as INFO.
`tests/validate-colorschemes.sh`	1	Headless Vim loader. Sources every scheme under `try/catch` (so `E411` "highlight group not found" does not abort), verifies no script-level error, and checks `g:colors_name` matches the basename. Schemes without `g:colors_name` are counted as INFO, not failed.
`tests/colors-name-pinned.sh`	1	Pins that the repo's OWN authored schemes (`menketech-cyberpunk`, `zpwr*`) declare `let g:colors_name = '<basename>'` — vendored upstream mismatches are tolerated, but authored schemes must complete correctly.
`tests/colors-name-vendored-walk.sh`	1	Walks the vendored schemes and audits their `g:colors_name` declarations.
`license.md`	1	MIT for the curation layer. Individual schemes retain their upstream licenses where applicable (see per-file headers).
`.github/workflows/ci.yml`	1	CI: static audit (non-empty files, count floor at 600, `g:colors_name` coverage), headless vim-load over every scheme, repo-contract, and the authored-scheme name pins.
Bundle total	732	colors/*.vim · 125,715 lines · pure Vimscript · zero runtime

$SCHEME FAMILIES

The 732 decks include several named families plus the MenkeTechnologies-authored set. Counts below are exact filename-prefix tallies from colors/.

Family / Author	Count	Members / notes
`base16-*`	11	The Atelier set (cave, dune, estuary, forest, heath, lakeside, plateau, savanna, seaside, sulphurpool) plus `base16-railscasts`.
`duotone-*`	12	cave, desert, earth, forest, heath, lake, meadow, park, pool, sea, space — plus the base `duotone-dark`.
`colorsbox-*`	7	faff, greenish, material, stblue, stbright, steighties, stnight.
`Tomorrow*`	5	Tomorrow, Tomorrow-Night, Tomorrow-Night-Blue, Tomorrow-Night-Bright, Tomorrow-Night-Eighties.
`zpwr*` (authored)	7	zpwrelise, zpwrelrond, zpwrguardian, zpwrmarklar, zpwrneverness, zpwrpride, zpwrsprinkles — MenkeTechnologies recolors of base decks.
`menketech*` (authored)	2	`menketechnologies` and `menketech-cyberpunk`.
Community classics	—	Ports / forks of gruvbox, solarized, molokai, jellybeans, onedark, zenburn, wombat, railscasts, PaperColor, OceanicNext, iceberg, badwolf, and many more.

=COLOR COVERAGE

Each scheme is highlight-group data. The split below is grep-derived from colors/ — the same file can appear in multiple rows (most define both GUI and terminal colors, and many branch on &background).

Dimension	Schemes	Meaning
GUI colors (`guifg`)	657	Define truecolor hex for GUI Vim / `termguicolors` terminals.
Terminal colors (`ctermfg`)	485	Define 256-color (or 16-color) `cterm` palettes for non-GUI terminal Vim.
`background=dark`	463	Branch into / declare a dark palette.
`background=light`	161	Branch into / declare a light palette.
`g:colors_name` declared	694	Match `colors_name` in some form — these surface in `:colorscheme <Tab>` completion. The remainder (~38 per CI) load fine but do not autocomplete.

#TEST & CI

Four shell test scripts under tests/, wired into a four-job GitHub Actions workflow. No live editor needed for three of them; the fourth installs vim-nox and sources every scheme headless.

CI job	Script	Pins
static-checks	(inline)	Every `colors/*.vim` is non-empty; total count must stay above a catastrophic-shrink floor of 600; `g:colors_name` coverage audit fails only if more than 60 schemes lack a name declaration.
vim-load	`validate-colorschemes.sh`	Installs `vim-nox`, sources every scheme under try/catch, verifies no script-level error and that `g:colors_name` matches the basename. 30-minute timeout for the full walk.
repo-contract	`repo-contract.sh`	README `schemes-N` badge matches live count; no empty / sub-10-byte / spaced / shell-unsafe / duplicate filenames.
colors-name-pinned	`colors-name-pinned.sh`	The repo's authored schemes (`menketech-cyberpunk`, `zpwr*`) declare `g:colors_name == basename` so they complete correctly.

/DESIGN DECISIONS

Bundle, not a plugin manager

Rather than installing 732 schemes through a manager one at a time, the entire curated set is one git clone. Cost: a larger repo (~6.3 MB). Gain: every palette is available with no per-scheme bookkeeping, and the set is reproducible across machines.

Zero runtime

No autoload/, no plugin/, no startup hook. Only the single scheme the user selects via :colorscheme is ever sourced — cold startup cost of the bundle is effectively zero, just the runtimepath entry.

Filename = scheme name

Vim's :colorscheme <name> resolves against the file basename. The repo-contract test rejects spaces, shell-unsafe characters, and duplicate basenames precisely because Vim silently shadows duplicates and cannot tab-complete names with spaces.

Tolerate vendored mismatches, pin own schemes

~38 vendored schemes pre-date the g:colors_name convention or declare a mismatched name; they load fine and are tolerated as INFO. The repo's OWN authored schemes (zpwr*, menketech-cyberpunk) are hard-pinned to name == basename so completion works.

Headless validation under try/catch

The CI validator sources each scheme in vim-nox wrapped in try/catch so a missing-plugin highlight group (E411) does not register as a failure — only true script-level parse errors fail the build.

Shrink guard, not exact pin

CI floors the count at 600 rather than pinning exactly 732 — adding schemes never breaks the build, but a catastrophic deletion (bad merge, accidental rm) does. The README badge, by contrast, is pinned exactly by repo-contract.sh.

@FOOTPRINT

Disk: 732 colors/*.vim files, 125,715 lines, ~6.3 MB. No compiled artifacts.
Startup cost: zero beyond the runtimepath entry — nothing is sourced until :colorscheme selects one file.
Runtime cost: one scheme file sourced per :colorscheme invocation. Largest single scheme is gryffin.vim at 1,305 lines; smallest is charged-256.vim at 18.
Dependencies: none for the bundle itself. CI's vim-load job installs vim-nox; the no-Vim gates run on a minimal image.
Compatibility: terminal Vim (256-color + truecolor), GUI Vim, Neovim. Any loader honouring runtimepath / :colorscheme <name> — Pathogen, vim-plug, packer, lazy.nvim, native Vim 8 packages, bare set rtp+=.
License: MIT for the curation layer; individual schemes retain their upstream licenses where applicable.