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Configuration and themes

The six themes, every configuration key with its environment variable and flag, and the other environment variables Astrolabe CLI reads.

Themes

There are six themes: onyx (the default: pure neutral greys with gold as the only accent, on the mark, bullets, links and bars), iron-gall (a warm near-black ground, ivory text and a gold accent), parchment (the light version of iron-gall), graphite (a neutral dark ground with the gold accent), mocha (Catppuccin) and sidereal (a deep blue-black night sky with violet and cyan; in 16 colours it uses magenta and cyan where the others use yellow). Space T cycles the themes, and :theme NAME picks one; both save the choice in the config file.

Configuration

Configuration is optional. The file is ~/.config/astrolabe-cli/config ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/astrolabe-cli/config). It holds key = value lines, and # starts a comment. Every key can also be set by an environment variable ASTROLABE_<KEY>, which takes precedence over the file. astrolabe doctor warns once about unknown keys.

KeyValues (default)EffectOverride
dirpaththe remembered vault: written by the first -C DIR and by astrolabe vault DIR, used when there is no -C, $ASTROLABE_DIR or vault marker above the working directoryASTROLABE_DIR, -C DIR
themeonyx iron-gall parchment graphite mocha sidereal (onyx)coloursASTROLABE_THEME, --theme
measurecolumns (78)maximum width of the page textASTROLABE_MEASURE, :set wrap=N
groundon off (on)paint the theme’s background at 256 colours and above; off keeps the terminal’s ownASTROLABE_GROUND
bidiauto on off runs (auto)how right-to-left text reaches the terminal: reordered and shaped (on), also pre-reversed for kitty (runs), or untouched (off)ASTROLABE_BIDI, --bidi
mouseon off (on)mouse reporting in the TUIASTROLABE_MOUSE
daily_dirfolder (daily, or Obsidian’s setting)where daily notes liveASTROLABE_DAILY_DIR
daily_formatMoment tokens (YYYY-MM-DD)daily note file name; supports YYYY YY MMMM MMM MM M DD D dddd dddASTROLABE_DAILY_FORMAT
editorbuiltin external (builtin)what i, a and e openASTROLABE_EDITOR
asciion off (off)ASCII glyphs onlyASTROLABE_ASCII, --ascii

Boolean values accept on/off, true/false, yes/no and 1/0. daily_dir and daily_format override .obsidian/daily-notes.json. For example:

# ~/.config/astrolabe-cli/config
dir = ~/notes
theme = parchment
measure = 72
editor = external

Other environment variables:

  • NO_COLOR turns colour off; COLORTERM and TERM are used to detect colour depth.
  • VISUAL, then EDITOR (default vi), choose the external editor.
  • XDG_CONFIG_HOME and XDG_STATE_HOME move the config and state files.
  • ASTROLABE_DEBUG=1 prints the first-frame time on exit and shows timings in the finder and search overlays.
  • The installer reads ASTROLABE_VERSION, ASTROLABE_BIN_DIR and ASTROLABE_BASE_URL; see sh install.sh --help.