Silos (Roadmap)

Silo support is planned for litmus’s next major version. This page describes the design direction, not current functionality.

A silo is an app that defines its own color palette, independent of the terminal provider. Changing your terminal theme has no effect on a silo — it controls its own colors entirely.

Examples

• Neovim with a colorscheme (e.g. tokyonight.nvim) — highlight groups map to arbitrary RGB, not ANSI indices
• Helix with a theme — same idea, editor-internal palette
• lazygit in built-in theme mode — uses its own color definitions instead of terminal ANSI

Why Silos Need Special Treatment

Silo themes are structurally different from provider themes. A neovim colorscheme defines highlight groups (Normal, Comment, String, Error, etc.) with arbitrary RGB values. These don’t map to the 16 ANSI palette — they exist in a completely separate color space.

This means:

• Silo themes can’t be previewed using provider color data
• A silo’s appearance is unaffected by provider theme changes
• The ecosystem view needs to visually distinguish “this changes with your theme” from “this stays the same”

Planned Features

• Silo theme definitions — a separate type modeling app-specific palettes (e.g. neovim highlight groups)
• Silo scene rendering — fixtures that use the silo’s own palette instead of the provider’s
• Dual-mode toggle — for apps like lazygit that can operate as consumer or silo, show both modes side by side
• Ecosystem view integration — clear visual separation between provider-affected consumers and independent silos