Squintless

Easy on the eyes.

A one-command, eye-strain–optimized terminal + Claude Code setup for Windows, macOS & Linux. Pick your palette — soft Gruvbox light (default) or deep Tokyo Night Moon (dark) — done cohesively: terminal, font, shell, git diffs and your Claude Code statusline all speak the same calm palette.

Install

It asks light or dark (or pass a flag), then sets everything up. The installer is idempotent and non-destructive — it backs up every file it touches (*.squintless-*.bak), only wires up tools you actually have, and you can re-run or uninstall any time. Restart your terminal when it's done.

(sameerzahir.com/sq and /sh are short 302-redirects to the raw install.ps1 / install.sh on main. Prefer no redirect? Use the full https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sameer-zahir/squintless/main/install.ps1.)

Windows · PowerShell 7+

irm https://sameerzahir.com/sq | iex

Choose up front and add the full treatment (font/render defaults + the matching Claude Code theme):

$s = irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sameer-zahir/squintless/main/install.ps1
& ([scriptblock]::Create($s)) -Dark -WithTerminalDefaults -WithClaude

(Not on PowerShell 7? winget install Microsoft.PowerShell, open pwsh, paste again. Piping irm | iex non-interactively defaults to light.)

Or from the PowerShell Gallery (versioned, Update-Module-able):

Install-Module Squintless -Scope CurrentUser
Invoke-Squintless -Dark          # or -Light, -WithClaude, -Uninstall, ...

Or via Scoop (versioned config files you can scoop update; apply with the one-liner above, or cherry-pick from the Scoop app dir):

scoop bucket add squintless https://github.com/sameer-zahir/squintless
scoop install squintless

macOS · Linux

curl -fsSL https://sameerzahir.com/sh | bash

Choose up front and add Claude Code:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sameer-zahir/squintless/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --dark --with-claude

It installs the tools with your package manager (Homebrew / apt / dnf / pacman), themes the terminals it detects (kitty & Ghostty automatically; WezTerm, Alacritty & iTerm2 get the scheme + a one-line instruction), and wires up your shell (zsh/bash). Other flags: --terminal=kitty,wezterm, --skip-deps, --uninstall, --yes.

Prefer to read it first? Clone the repo and run .\install.ps1 (or ./install.sh) locally — every config it places lives in config/, and it writes a *.squintless-*.bak next to anything it changes. Nothing is hidden.

⭐ If Squintless saves your eyes, a star genuinely helps it reach the next person squinting at their screen.

What you get

Layer	What Squintless sets up
Terminal	A Squintless (Gruvbox Light) or Squintless (Tokyo Night Moon) color scheme — soft #F2E5BC or deep #222436, no harsh white. Windows Terminal on Windows; kitty / WezTerm / Alacritty / Ghostty / iTerm2 on macOS & Linux
Font	JetBrains Mono Nerd Font, installed from the official Nerd Fonts release
Shell	A themed oh-my-posh prompt in your palette — PowerShell on Windows, zsh/bash on macOS & Linux — plus zoxide / eza / bat / lazygit wired in (and PSReadLine syntax colors on PowerShell)
Git	git-delta with a matching syntax theme (gruvbox-light / TwoDark) — readable diffs that match everything else
Claude Code (optional)	theme matched to your variant + a curated ccstatusline statusline

Everything is plain config you can read in config/ — nothing hidden.

Light or dark

Two cohesive palettes, same treatment end-to-end. The installer asks which you want, or pass -Light / -Dark:

Variant	Scheme	Background	Built for
Light (default)	Squintless (Gruvbox Light)	#F2E5BC	bright rooms, long daytime sessions
Dark	Squintless (Tokyo Night Moon)	#222436	low light, late-night sessions

Each variant carries its own scheme, oh-my-posh prompt, PSReadLine syntax colors, git-delta theme and font/render defaults — the .dark.* files in config/ mirror the light ones, recolored.

Why

I built this because my eyes hurt. I spend most of my day in a terminal, so I asked Claude to help me rebuild mine to be genuinely easy on the eyes — then realised the setup was worth sharing with anyone who codes long days. The full story →

Most terminal setups are dark, high-contrast, and built to look striking in a screenshot. That's great until you're eight hours into a session in a bright room and your eyes are done.

Light themes exist, but they're usually just a color scheme — the prompt, the diffs, the ls output and the statusline are all still a mismatched mess. Squintless is the opposite: a single, coherent, low-strain palette across the whole terminal, with the font and rendering tuned to match. It's the setup I actually use all day, packaged so you can have it in one command.

• Soft, not bright — a warm #F2E5BC background instead of glaring white.
• Cohesive — terminal, prompt, syntax, git diffs and Claude Code all in one palette.
• Legible — JetBrains Mono Nerd Font with grayscale antialiasing (crisp on modern/OLED panels).
• Honest config — every value is in config/, copy what you like.

The research — why these exact colors

Squintless isn't a vibe — the palette traces to how eyes actually read a screen. Every contrast number below is computed from the palette by tools/gen.py (full table: config/generated/wcag-contrast.md); the physiological notes are rationale, with the full write-up here.

• No glaring white, no pure black. Light is a warm #F2E5BC (≈78% of pure white's luminance — softer in a bright room); dark is #222436, not #000000. Bright text on true black causes halation/ghosting that's worse for the substantial share of people with astigmatism, so the dark background keeps some luminance.
• Body text clears WCAG AAA. Foreground-on-background contrast is 9.2:1 (light) and 10.3:1 (dark) — past the 7:1 AAA bar for normal text. Accent colors (git status, syntax) sit in the 3–7:1 range by design: legible as accents on a calm background, not body copy.
• Weight that survives rendering. The font is set to Medium, which holds up better than Regular under ClearType / grayscale subpixel rendering on HiDPI panels — thin strokes are where "blurry on Windows" usually comes from.
• Light leans default. Dark text on a light background (positive polarity) tends to be read a touch faster for typical vision — so light is the default, with dark a first-class choice for low-light rooms.

No unsourced clinical claims here: the numbers regenerate from the palette, and the "why" links to the longer story.

Tuning for your display

The light variant's -WithTerminalDefaults are tuned for a HiDPI / OLED laptop (≈215 PPI, 200% scaling); the dark variant ships ClearType at size 15 for a standard LCD. Adjust either in Windows Terminal (Settings → your profile → Appearance, or profiles.defaults):

Setting	Squintless default (OLED/HiDPI)	Standard LCD
antialiasingMode	grayscale (avoids color fringing on OLED subpixels)	cleartype
font.cellHeight	1.35	1.0–1.15
font.size	14	11–12

(macOS/Linux: install.sh themes colors only — set your terminal's font to a JetBrains Mono Nerd Font at a comfortable size yourself.)

What the installer does (and how to undo it)

1. Installs the tools (oh-my-posh, delta, zoxide, eza, bat, lazygit) + the JetBrains Mono Nerd Font — via winget on Windows, Homebrew/apt/dnf/pacman on macOS & Linux.
2. Adds your chosen scheme to your terminal — a non-destructive fragment + active scheme on Windows; a kitty/Ghostty include (or a dropped scheme + one-line instruction for WezTerm/Alacritty/iTerm2) on macOS & Linux.
3. Copies the oh-my-posh theme to ~/.config/ohmyposh/.
4. Adds a marker-delimited block to your shell startup file — PowerShell $PROFILE, or ~/.zshrc / ~/.bash_profile / ~/.bashrc — that loads the prompt + tool init.
5. Configures git-delta in ~/.gitconfig.
6. (optional, -WithClaude / --with-claude) installs ccstatusline and sets the Claude Code theme (matching your variant) + statusline.

Uninstall — -Uninstall (Windows) or --uninstall (macOS/Linux):

$s = irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sameer-zahir/squintless/main/install.ps1
& ([scriptblock]::Create($s)) -Uninstall

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sameer-zahir/squintless/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --uninstall

It removes the shell block, the color scheme, the git-delta config and the oh-my-posh theme — backing up each file first and leaving installed tools in place. Prefer to do it by hand? Delete the # >>> squintless >>> … # <<< squintless <<< block, or restore any *.squintless-*.bak backup. Nothing installs a service or runs in the background.

Prefer to cherry-pick?

Clone it and take only the pieces you want — every file in config/ is standalone:

git clone https://github.com/sameer-zahir/squintless.git
cd squintless
.\install.ps1 -WithTerminalDefaults -WithClaude   # Windows — or copy individual config files by hand

./install.sh --with-claude                         # macOS / Linux

Use it inside Claude Code

Squintless is also a tiny Claude Code plugin. Add the marketplace, install it, then run /squintless-setup — Claude walks you through it for your OS: the full terminal install on Windows / macOS / Linux, or just the Claude Code theme + statusline anywhere.

/plugin marketplace add sameer-zahir/squintless
/plugin install squintless@squintless

Credits

Made by Sameer Zahir · @sameer-zahir

Built on the shoulders of Gruvbox, JetBrains Mono, Nerd Fonts, oh-my-posh, git-delta and ccstatusline. The color scheme is also available for other terminals via iTerm2-Color-Schemes.

Contributions welcome: more terminals, more package managers (a Homebrew tap would be great), more palettes. Open an issue or PR.

⭐ Star Squintless if it helped your eyes.

MIT © 2026 Sameer Zahir