# Falcon ships one palette to a long list of terminals and editors

> Falcon is a colour scheme repository rather than a single plugin, with directories for terminals, editors, shells and utilities, plus a shared definition built with estilo. It suits someone who wants one restrained palette across a whole workstation rather than a theme per application.

**fenetikm/falcon** — A colour scheme for terminals, Vim and friends.

- Repository: https://github.com/fenetikm/falcon
- Stars: 851 · Forks: 34
- Language: Vim Script
- License: MIT
- Published: 2026-10-20 · Updated: 2026-10-20 · Language: en
- Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/fenetikm-falcon

## A repository of themes rather than a single plugin

Falcon describes itself as a colour scheme for terminals, vim and friends, and the repository layout makes the shape of the project obvious. There is no single plugin folder with one theme file. Instead there is a directory for each program it covers, including alacritty, foot, iterm2, kitty, mintty, terminal, windowsterminal, bat, exa, fzf, prism, ranger, skim, yazi, zsh, liquidprompt, taskwarrior, timewarrior, vivid, sublime, ace, alfred, nb and slack. The README points to a wiki page called Coverage for the full list, which suggests the repository is the source of truth and the wiki is the index. The practical audience is someone with a specific set of applications on one machine who wants them to look like one system.

## The design brief in the README's own words

The README is short and mostly states intent. Falcon is called a work horse of a colour scheme that will hopefully stand the test of time, with fewer gimmicks and a more restrained colour palette, but with a splash just enough to distinguish everything semantically, and a touch of delight thrown in. The current version is described as v2.0, vastly improved, with more tweak and less cruft. Two things follow from that brief. The palette is meant to be quiet, so a large saturated set of accent colours is out of scope, and the semantic distinctness is the point, so statuses and syntax roles are supposed to be told apart at a glance rather than by counting hues.

## Shared colour data and the estilo toolchain

The colour definitions live apart from the per-program folders, and the repository root shows how. There are `colors/`, `autoload/`, `plugin/`, `lua/` and `support/` directories, which are the conventional places a Vim colourscheme keeps its palette, its autoloaded helpers and its plugin logic. The README credits estilo as the tool Falcon was built with, and the root contains both an `estilo.yml` file and an `estilo/` directory, so the palette appears to be expressed in a form the generator can read. What that means practically is that the palette is defined once and then projected into each program's format, which is exactly how a colour scheme avoids twenty hand-tuned copies drifting apart.

## Where the install steps actually live

If you are looking for a command to copy, the README will not give you one. It sends you to the wiki installation page to get going, and separately points to a Coverage page listing the plugins and programs that are handled, a screenshot gallery, a palette reference, and a troubleshooting and FAQ section. That arrangement has an upside and a downside. The upside is that a wiki page can be updated without a release, and the coverage list can grow independently of the theme files. The downside is that the repository itself is not self-describing for a newcomer, and there is no packaged installer or install script in the root, so the practical first step is a browser visit rather than a terminal command. The repository also carries a TODO file and a corpus directory, which are useful if you plan to extend the palette yourself.

## Terminals first, then the rest of the stack

The set of covered programs tells you what the author uses, and it is worth reading as a list of priorities. The terminal coverage is the broadest, with alacritty, foot, iterm2, kitty, mintty, terminal and windowsterminal all present, which is consistent with a project whose primary audience is people who live in a terminal. Editors and viewers follow, with vim and neovim in the topics, sublime, ace and prism as other editors and syntax highlighters, and bat, fzf and skim as terminal utilities that render text. The shell and prompt layer is covered too, with zsh and liquidprompt directories, and the wider toolchain appears through exa, cava, ranger, yazi, taskwarrior, timewarrior, vivid, alfred, nb and slack. One directory per program, all fed from the same definition.

## gruvbox as the starting point, and where Falcon differs

The README names its inspiration explicitly. Falcon grew from gruvbox, and the reasoning given is that gruvbox was not quite right to the author's tastes and therefore became the seed of the project. That is a useful signal about the design space, because gruvbox is a well known warm, retro style with a large set of contrasting accents. The Falcon description reads as a reaction to that: fewer gimmicks, a more restrained palette, and colour used semantically rather than decoratively. The credit list also names everyone who Vims, and points to a contact page for the author, which is the shape of a personal project maintained by one person rather than a community project with a roadmap.

## MIT licence and a repository without tagged releases

The licence is MIT, which in short terms lets you use, modify and redistribute the theme as long as the notice and the licence text are kept with it. That is a comfortable position for a colour scheme, since it lets a team vendor the palette into a dotfiles repository without obligations beyond attribution. The maintenance picture is thinner than the coverage list suggests. The repository has no GitHub releases, so there is no version to point a dotfiles submodule at, and the last push was on 2026-07-02. The README calls this version v2.0 in prose, which is the only version marker available. For a theme that people import from a version control URL, the practical consequence is that you track the master branch and accept whatever it contains at the moment you clone.

## Conclusion

Adopt Falcon when you want one colour language across terminals, editors, shells and small utilities, since the repository keeps a directory per program and a shared palette rather than a single plugin. Do not adopt it as a source of install steps, because the README delegates setup to a wiki and the repository itself ships definitions rather than a documented installer. Verify first that the wiki installation page covers the program you want, and note that the repository has no GitHub releases and that the last push was on 2026-07-02, so treat the master branch as the only version to pin against.

## FAQ

### How do I install the Falcon colour scheme?

The README sends you to the wiki installation page to get going, and to a separate Coverage page listing the plugins and programs that are handled. The repository itself does not ship a documented install command.

### Which terminals and editors does Falcon cover?

The repository has a directory per program, including alacritty, foot, iterm2, kitty, mintty, windowsterminal, sublime, ace, prism, bat, fzf, skim, ranger, yazi, zsh and liquidprompt, with the full list kept on the wiki Coverage page.

### What is Falcon built with?

The README credits estilo as the tool Falcon was built with, and the repository root contains an `estilo.yml` file along with an `estilo/` directory, alongside shared `colors/`, `autoload/` and `plugin/` directories.

### What colour scheme inspired Falcon?

The README names gruvbox as the inspiration, explaining that gruvbox was not quite right to the author's tastes and therefore became the seed of the project.

### What licence is Falcon released under and are there tagged releases?

Falcon is released under the MIT licence. The repository has no GitHub releases, so there is no tagged version to pin to, and the last push was on 2026-07-02.

## Sources

- [fenetikm/falcon on GitHub](https://github.com/fenetikm/falcon)
- [Issues](https://github.com/fenetikm/falcon/issues)
- [License: MIT](https://github.com/fenetikm/falcon/blob/master/LICENSE)
- [README](https://github.com/fenetikm/falcon/blob/master/README.md)

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Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/fenetikm-falcon