Claude Code Colorizer

Color visualization for Claude Code, in the spirit of nvim-colorizer. Written in Go with no dependencies.

• Statusline swatches. Colors mentioned in the conversation (Claude's replies, code it writes, your prompts) appear as live swatches under the prompt. It reads#rgb ,#rrggbb(aa) ,rgb()/rgba() ,hsl()/hsla() andoklch() .
• State colors. The terminal tab and background tint change as the session moves throughworking → needs you → done / error .
• show / try. Highlight color literals in any file (claude-colorizer show styles.css ), or preview a color as your terminal background (claude-colorizer try '#1e1e2e' ).

Ghostty is the most tested terminal: it's the one claude-colorizer is developed in. The other drivers follow each terminal's documented escape sequences and have unit tests, but see less real use. If you use one of them, see CONTRIBUTING.md for a short test checklist and how to report results or add a terminal.

Statusline swatches use 24-bit SGR colors, which work in all of them.

Each terminal is a driver implementing terminal.Terminal (internal/terminal/drivers.go). Detection reads environment variables (internal/terminal/detect.go). Inside tmux it asks tmux which terminal each client tty attached to the session is running instead, because the environment describes the terminal that started the tmux server. If different terminals are attached, tab colors are sent to all of them. To override detection, set CLAUDE_COLORIZER_TERMINAL=kitty|ghostty|wezterm|iterm2|warp|alacritty|windows-terminal|generic. Run claude-colorizer detect to see what was picked.

¹ Kitty: add allow_remote_control yes to kitty.conf (or socket-only plus listen_on). Without it, kitty ignores the tab color and only the background changes.

² WezTerm: the color is published as the user var claude_colorizer_tab. To paint the tab, add this to wezterm.lua:

wezterm.on('format-tab-title', function(tab)
  local c = tab.active_pane.user_vars.claude_colorizer_tab
  if c and c ~= '' then
    return { { Background = { Color = c } }, { Foreground = { Color = '#000000' } },
             { Text = ' ' .. tab.active_pane.title .. ' ' } }
  end
end)

tmux: background tint and title work without any setup; tmux applies them to the pane. Tab colors (kitty, iTerm2, WezTerm) have to reach the outer terminal, so they need set -g allow-passthrough on. They are wrapped automatically when $TMUX is set.

Title fallback: Claude Code sets the terminal title itself and may overwrite the glyph. If your version supports CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_TERMINAL_TITLE=1, set it. If you don't want the glyph, set "title": false.

You need Go 1.22+ and Claude Code.

git clone <this repo> && cd claude-colorizer
make install

That's the whole setup. make install does two things:

1. Runs go install , which builds the binary into$(go env GOPATH)/bin .
2. Runs claude-colorizer install , which adds the statusline and all hooks to~/.claude/settings.json using the binary'sabsolute path , so it doesn't matter whether that directory is on your$PATH .

Restart Claude Code, then try it: ask Claude for a palette and the swatches appear under the prompt. The tab or background changes while it works.

Tab colors in Kitty and WezTerm need one extra piece of terminal config. See Terminal support.

• Backup: the previous file is saved assettings.json.bak . Ifsettings.json isn't valid JSON (for example, it has comments), install refuses to touch it.
• Your existing statusline is kept: it's chained, so its output renders on the line above the swatches.uninstall puts it back exactly.
• Hooks: they are appended next to any hooks you already have, never replacing them. Runninginstall again doesn't add duplicates.
• Key order: keys insettings.json are rewritten in alphabetical order.

Preview the changes first with claude-colorizer install --dry-run.

Pass flags through make with make install ARGS="--no-statusline".

make uninstall        # or: claude-colorizer uninstall

This removes only the entries it added, restores a chained statusline, and deletes the binary.

The repo is also a plugin marketplace. The plugin only provides the hooks, because plugins can't set a statusline:

/plugin marketplace add /path/to/claude-colorizer
/plugin install claude-colorizer@claude-colorizer

Then run claude-colorizer install --no-hooks to add the statusline without registering the hooks twice. To try it for a single session without installing, run claude --plugin-dir /path/to/claude-colorizer.

The tab, background tint and title glyph show what the session is doing, so you can tell from another tab or window whether Claude needs you.

Red after a failed tool call doesn't always mean the turn is over. Claude often recovers, and the color goes back to blue on its next successful tool call. Red after an API error stays until you send another prompt.

The glyph is a fallback for terminals that can't color their tabs. It appears at the start of the window title. See the Title fallback column in Terminal support.

To change any color or glyph, see Configuration.

~/.config/claude-colorizer/config.json (or $CLAUDE_COLORIZER_CONFIG). Every key is optional and is layered over the defaults. Run claude-colorizer config to print the effective config.

{
  "tab": true,
  "background": true,
  "title": true,
  "states": {
    "working": { "tab": "#7c3aed", "background": "#1a1426" },
    "done":    { "background": "#eef9f0" }
  },
  "statusline": {
    "max": 12,
    "sources": ["assistant", "tools", "user"],
    "label": "hex",
    "prefix": "🎨 ",
    "empty": ""
  }
}

The default background tints assume a dark theme. On a light theme, set light background values, or set "background": false.

make test     # go vet + unit tests (parser, drivers, detection, transcript)
make cross    # linux/darwin/windows binaries in dist/

See CONTRIBUTING.md for testing on a terminal and adding a new one.