Generation styles

Prerequisites

• Node.js 22+
• @themvora/cli installed (globally, locally, or via npx)

A generation style is the visual language the generator works in. It decides how much chroma the surfaces carry, how the secondary and accent roles relate to the primary hue, how strong borders are, and how deep the dark mode goes.

themvora list styles
themvora generate --seed "#6366f1" --style editorial

The six styles

balanced is the default and the reference point. The others each move a small number of parameters in one direction, so the difference between any two is legible rather than arbitrary.

The last column is a summary. Concretely, the parameters that move are the surface chroma, the primary chroma multiplier, the secondary and accent hue relationships, the neutral temperature, the border strength, the dark surface depth, and the band the primary's lightness is clamped into.

brand is different on purpose

The other five styles interpret the seed. brand treats it as an anchor: the primary is allowed to stay as dark as #000000 or as light as #ffffff, which is why its lightness band is the widest of the six. A near-black brand stays near-black instead of being lifted into a mid-tone.

Contrast repair still applies — it moves the ink first and the surface only as far as it must — so a brand theme remains accessible.

That is why four of the five brand recipes use it, and vercel does not: a monochrome identity reads better through minimal.

Using a style

# On a seed
themvora generate --seed "#6366f1" --style editorial

# On a seed added to a project
themvora add seed "#6366f1" --family indigo --style soft

# Overriding the style a preset pins
themvora generate --preset mint --style vibrant

--style is accepted wherever a seed is generated. A preset or brand already pins a style, and passing --style overrides it.

Discovering the values

themvora list styles            # the six names
themvora list styles --ids      # just the identifiers, one per line
themvora list styles --json     # the registry

The names come from the generator's own GENERATION_STYLE_NAMES, so the CLI cannot accept a style the engine does not implement.

Styles are not themes

A style does not produce a theme on its own — it is a parameter of generation:

seed colour  +  style  ──→  generateTheme  ──→  theme.json

Two runs with the same seed and style produce byte-identical output. That is what makes a preset reproducible: a preset is exactly a seed, a style and a character, pinned together.

Next Steps

• Presets — nine curated seed + style combinations.
• Brand recipes — the recipes that use brand.
• Generate a theme — the full command.
• Diff two themes — see what a style change actually moves.