(Bit-Mage)

Cyber Medieval Sourceror's Cave

A dark cyberpunk Emacs theme with neon green and slateblue accents, plus a Doom live-coding module inspired by emacs-live.

Philosophy

"Cyber Medieval Sourceror's Cave"

Bit-Mage draws inspiration from:

• The neon-green Matrix aesthetic of terminal hacking
• Medieval grimoires and arcane study chambers
• Live coding environments like Emacs Live and Overtone
• The focused concentration of late-night coding sessions

Design Principles

1. Low-light optimized: Deep blacks and muted backgrounds reduce eye strain
2. Semantic color hierarchy: Greens for code, blues for structure, purples for accents
3. Live-coding focused: Clear visual feedback for evaluation and debugging
4. Keyboard-centric: No UI chrome, maximum code visibility

Color Palette

Role	Color	Hex	Usage
Background	void	gray1	Main editing area
Foreground	neon green	#00FF00	Primary text
Accent 1	slateblue	slateblue	Structure, types
Accent 2	spring green	spring green	Success, strings
Warning	orange	#ffaf00	Warnings, modified
Error	red	#ff5f5f	Errors, failures

See the full palette (~30 color variables) in bit-mage-theme.el.

Screenshots

GUI

CLI (-nw)

Cool Retro Term

Installation

Doom Emacs (recommended)

Add to packages.el:

(package! bit-mage-theme.el
  :recipe (:host github :repo "rajp152k/bit-mage-theme.el"))

Add to config.el:

(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path
             (file-name-as-directory
              (expand-file-name "bit-mage-theme.el"
                                (file-name-directory (straight--repos-dir "bit-mage-theme.el")))))

(setq doom-theme 'bit-mage)
(load-theme 'bit-mage t)

Then run doom sync and restart Emacs.

Vanilla Emacs

Clone and add to your load path:

git clone https://github.com/rajp152k/bit-mage-theme.el.git ~/.emacs.d/themes/bit-mage

(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path "~/.emacs.d/themes/bit-mage")
(load-theme 'bit-mage t)

Live-Coding Module (Doom Emacs)

A Doom module inspired by emacs-live that adds visual feedback for live coding. Included in this repo under modules/private/live-coding/.

Setup

1. Symlink the module into your Doom config:

mkdir -p ~/.config/doom/modules/private
ln -s /path/to/bit-mage-theme.el/modules/private/live-coding \
      ~/.config/doom/modules/private/live-coding

2. Add to your init.el (inside the doom! block):

:private
(live-coding +pulse +prettify +aggressive)

3. Run doom sync and restart.

Flags

Flag	Feature	Description
+pulse	pulse.el	Animated purple color-fade on eval for both elisp and CIDER commands
+flash	eval-sexp-fu	Static overlay flash (0.4s, purple orchid) — alternative to +pulse
+prettify	prettify-symbols	Displays fn and lambda as λ in Lisp modes
+aggressive	aggressive-indent	Auto-reindent on every keystroke in Lisp modes

+pulse (recommended) uses Emacs built-in pulse.el for an animated fade effect. On eval, the sexp region flashes with a purple tint (#2a0040) that gradually fades back to the background. Errors flash red (#330000). Works for both elisp (C-x C-e, eval-defun) and CIDER (cider-eval-last-sexp, cider-eval-defun-at-point, cider-pprint-eval-last-sexp).

+flash uses eval-sexp-fu for a static overlay approach. Use one or the other — +pulse is the recommended default.

Package Coverage

The theme covers 300+ faces across these packages:

Category	Packages
Core	Default, font-lock, tree-sitter, mode-line, minibuffer
Clojure	CIDER (36 faces), eval-sexp-fu, clojure-mode
Completion	Vertico, Marginalia, Orderless, Consult, Corfu, Company, Ivy
VCS	Magit (45+ faces), diff, ediff, git-gutter, git-commit
Org	Org-mode (50+ faces), org-roam
File management	Dired, Diredfl, Treemacs
Editing	Smartparens, hl-sexp, volatile-highlights, rainbow-delimiters
Diagnostics	Flycheck, Flymake, LSP Mode/UI
UI	Doom dashboard/modeline, which-key, hydra, avy, tab-bar
Help	Apropos, Info, helpful
Other	Elfeed, Eshell, ERC, LaTeX, Markdown, term

Customization

Adjusting Colors

The theme uses let* binding for all colors. Fork and modify:

(let* ((bg-void "gray1")        ; Change background here
       (fg-main "green")        ; Change foreground here
       ...)

Recommended Complementary Packages

• rainbow-delimiters — Paren depth highlighting (themed with 4-color rotation)
• eval-sexp-fu — Flash on eval (included in live-coding module)
• doom-modeline — Themed modeline (faces included)
• aggressive-indent — Auto-reindent (included in live-coding module)