Plugin architecture

Tinct uses a plugin-based architecture for both input (colour sources) and output (application configurations).

Plugin types

Input plugins

Extract or generate colour palettes from various sources:

Plugin	Description
image	Extract from JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP images
google-genai	Generate with Google Gemini AI
openrouter	Generate via OpenRouter API
remote-json	Fetch from JSON URLs
remote-css	Parse CSS variables
file	Manual colour specification
markdown	Load saved theme files

Output plugins

Generate configuration files for applications:

• Terminals - Alacritty, Ghostty, Kitty, Konsole, Ptyxis
• Desktop environments - GNOME, KDE, GTK, Qt
• Window managers - Hyprland, Hyprlock, Hyprpaper
• Bars and launchers - Waybar, Dunst, Fuzzel, etc.
• Editors - Neovim, Zellij
• Special - Markdown export, custom templates

Built-in vs external

Built-in plugins

• Compiled into the tinct binary
• Written in Go
• Maximum performance
• No external dependencies

External plugins

• Separate executables
• Written in any language
• Two protocols: JSON-stdio and go-plugin
• Loaded on demand

See Plugin development for details.

Plugin lifecycle

1. Registration: Plugins register with the manager on startup
2. Flag registration: Plugins add their CLI flags
3. Validation: Pre-execution checks (dependencies, paths)
4. Execution: Generate method is called with theme data
5. Post-hooks: Optional reload/apply actions

Using plugins

Specify input plugin

tinct generate -i <plugin-name>

Specify output plugins

# Single plugin
tinct generate -i image -p wallpaper.jpg -o kitty

# Multiple plugins
tinct generate -i image -p wallpaper.jpg -o kitty,hyprland,waybar

# All plugins
tinct generate -i image -p wallpaper.jpg -o all

Plugin-specific flags

Plugins can define additional flags:

tinct generate -i image -p wallpaper.jpg \
  --image.colors 16 \
  --image.extractAmbience \
  --kitty.reload

Plugin configuration

Environment variables

# Enable only specific plugins
export TINCT_ENABLED_PLUGINS="image,hyprland,kitty"

# Disable plugins
export TINCT_DISABLED_PLUGINS="waybar"

Configuration file

.tinct-plugins.json:

{
  "enabled_plugins": ["image", "hyprland", "kitty"],
  "disabled_plugins": ["waybar"],
  "external_plugins": {}
}

Listing plugins

See all available plugins:

tinct plugins list

Next steps

• Input plugins - Colour source plugins
• Output plugins - Application plugins
• Plugin development - Creating custom plugins