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Version: 0.3.3

random

Generates a colour palette algorithmically — no image, no file, no network. Each colour is drawn from a deterministic PRNG (ChaCha8) seeded either explicitly via --plugin-arg seed=… or, by default, from crypto/rand. The same seed always produces the same palette, which makes this plugin useful for reproducible experimentation, stress-testing the categoriser with hostile inputs, and bootstrapping a theme when you have no image or palette in mind.

Installation​

Via the official plugin repository​

tinct plugins install random

Build from source​

cd contrib/plugins/input/random
go build -ldflags "-X main.Version=0.1.0" -o tinct-plugin-random
install -m 0755 tinct-plugin-random ~/.local/bin/

Verify​

which tinct-plugin-random
tinct-plugin-random --plugin-info | jq .

The plugin uses tinct's go-plugin RPC protocol and is discovered automatically once it's on $PATH.

Quick start​

# Default — 32 random colours from a fresh crypto/rand seed
tinct generate -i random -o tailwind

# Reproducible — same seed, same palette every run
tinct generate -i random -o tailwind --plugin-arg seed=12345

# Smaller palette
tinct generate -i random -o tailwind --plugin-arg count=16

Configuration / credentials​

No credentials, no network access, no files. The only inputs are the two plugin-args (count and seed). Both can be persisted via tinct plugins config random so subsequent tinct generate -i random … invocations don't need to repeat them.

If seed is omitted, the plugin reads 8 bytes from crypto/rand and uses them as the ChaCha8 seed — so every run produces a different palette. Pass seed (any unsigned 64-bit integer) to lock generation to a known result.

Flags​

This plugin uses --plugin-arg key=value rather than dedicated CLI flags:

ArgumentTypeDefaultDescription
countinteger32Number of colours to generate (0–4096)
seedinteger(crypto/rand)ChaCha8 seed for reproducible generation

Output​

A palette of count colours (default 32), each drawn uniformly at random from the full RGB cube. No role hints are emitted — tinct's categoriser is responsible for picking background, foreground, accents, etc., from the generated set. No theme hint is emitted either, so light/dark is inferred from the average luminance of the result.

This plugin does not provide a wallpaper.

Troubleshooting​

plugin-arg 'count' out of range​

count is capped at 4096 to prevent accidental misuse (a million colours doesn't yield a more interesting palette than a hundred). Pass a value in 0..4096.

plugin-arg 'count' must be a number​

Plugin-args arrive as JSON, where numbers decode as float64. Pass the value bare (count=32) — quotes turn it into a string and the validator will reject it.

Same seed produces a different palette than last time​

A change to the colour-generation function (e.g. tinct upgraded the PRNG, or this plugin's version changed) will produce different output for the same seed. Pin both the tinct version and the tinct-plugin-random version if exact reproducibility across machines matters.

Palette looks washed-out / cluttered​

Uniform random sampling of RGB doesn't produce aesthetically grouped palettes — that's the point. If you wanted a palette with semantic structure, use image, paletty, or one of the AI-generation inputs instead.

  • image — extract a coherent palette from a real image.
  • paletty — fetch a curated palette from paletty.dev.
  • google-genai, openrouter — generate a source image with an AI model.