Zenbones is a collection of Vim/Neovim colorschemes designed to highlight code using contrasts and font variations. Colors are tasked only for other roles such as diagnostics, diffs, search matches.

It is carefully crafted for extensibility. You can create your own zenbones-based colorscheme or try the built-in collection.

⚠️ Breaking change notice ⚠️

zenflesh is deprecated in favor of zenbones background=dark. It is expected to be removed in the next release.

See all the changelogs in the release page.

A rock garden in Ryōan-ji.

Recommended setup

Neovim with true colors support i.e. set termguicolors. Vim works but only in compatibility mode.
Font with bold and italic
Terminal or GUI with bold and italic support

Installation

Example installation using packer:

use {
    "mcchrish/zenbones.nvim",
    -- Optionally install Lush. Allows for more configuration or extending the colorscheme
    requires = "rktjmp/lush.nvim"
    -- If you don't want to install lush, make sure to set g:zenbones_compat = 1
}

Usage

Just apply the colorscheme as usual:

set termguicolors
set background=light " or dark

colorscheme zenbones

colorscheme zenwritten   " Zero hue and saturation version
colorscheme neobones     " https://neovim.io flavor
colorscheme vimbones     " https://www.vim.org flavor
colorscheme rosebones    " Rosé Pine flavor - https://rosepinetheme.com
colorscheme forestbones  " Everforest flavor - https://github.com/sainnhe/everforest
colorscheme nordbones    " Nord flavor - https://www.nordtheme.com/docs/colors-and-palettes
colorscheme tokyobones   " Tokyo Night flavor - https://github.com/enkia/tokyo-night-vscode-theme#color-palette

Configuration and other documentations

See documentations or :help zenbones.txt.

Showcase

light	dark

'bright'	default	'dim'

'stark'	default	'warm'

See more showcase from the other flavors here.

Other plugins support

Aside from LSP and basic Tree-sitter support, here are some plugins that are currently supported.

Other implementations

It's also possible to generate any color configuration files using a template, this one for Kitty for example. Please feel free to submit a PR if you want to add some more.

Inspirations

Zenbones is heavily inspired by Verdandi and vim-yin-yang. The name came from a book called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.

There are more similar colorschemes with few colors from this collection.