A pigment-inspired colour palette for reading and code, rooted in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Warm paper on one end, deep ink on the other, and eight accent hues named after the crew of the whaler. Designed for long reading and long-form code, not glance-ability.

Pequod swatches

Themes included

Pequod — dark (deep-ink Log 950 surface, cream Log 100 text)
Pequod Light — light (warm-paper Log 50 surface, deep-navy Log 800 text)

Activate with Preferences: Color Theme and pick Pequod or Pequod Light.

The crew

Each accent is a character with a syntax role:

Crew	Role	Light	Dark
Ahab — the wound, the fire	keywords, errors	`#A83732`	`#E3877C`
Starbuck — moderate reason	functions, links	`#0082B1`	`#A6DFFF`
Queequeg — tattoos, loyalty	types, classes	`#253E82`	`#838CCF`
Pip — sun-addled	numbers, literals	`#6A4A00`	`#DEC577`
Ishmael — the narrator	comments, punctuation	`#76716B`	`#BFBBB6`
Stubb — pipe smoke	constants, warnings	`#CA6435`	`#FFD9BB`
Tashtego — moss, low pine	strings, success	`#177c55`	`#82C4A2`
Daggoo — mahogany	variables, properties	`#552823`	`#a17069`

Accessibility

Body-text contrast on the light theme: 10.5 : 1 (Log 800 on Log 50). On dark: 16.2 : 1 (Log 100 on Log 950).
All eight dark-mode accents clear WCAG-AA (4.5 : 1) on Log 950.
Five of eight light-mode accents clear AA-body on Log 100; the other three (Pip, Stubb, Starbuck) are tuned for bold, large text, or UI elements where AA-large (3 : 1) applies.
Worst-case colour-vision-deficiency collapses are documented in the main repository: Pip↔Stubb collapse under tritanopia, Ahab↔Daggoo under protanopia. Pair these with shape, weight, or position where colour-blind-safe distinction matters.

Beyond VS Code

Pequod also ships as:

Zed theme family (dark + light) — single JSON file, drop into ~/.config/zed/themes/.
iTerm2 preset (dark).
R package (pequod) with palette helpers and ggplot2 scales — install via install.packages("pequod") or from GitHub.
Printable A4 specimen PDF, generated from the canonical tokens with Typst.
pequod.json — the canonical machine-readable token file (CC-BY-4.0). Use it to generate themes for any other tool.

All of these live at github.com/tiagojct/pequod. The narrative, the design rationale, and the full accessibility analysis are at tiagojct.eu/projects/pequod.