Brutus

A dark Neovim colorscheme inspired by "The Kinetic Schematic" — Neo-Brutalist precision meets deep-space energy. Built for NvChad via base46, with a standalone fallback for vanilla Neovim.

Design

Rooted in a high-contrast, deep-navy foundation with Cobalt Blue and Neon Cyan as the signature accents. The palette is structured around "Binary Layering" — sharp tonal steps instead of soft shadows — so every surface boundary reads clearly at a glance.

Role	Color
Background	#05080f
Sidebar / statusline	#0d1220
Selection / floats	#172030
Comments / borders	#707584
Foreground	#e0e5f6
Primary (Cobalt)	#7bafff
Secondary (Cyan)	#00fbfb
Error / delete	#ff716c
Strings / added	#50fa7b
Keywords	#c792ea
Constants	#ff9e64
Classes / search	#ffd866
Deprecated	#ff79c6

Requirements

• Neovim >= 0.10
• NvChad v2.5 + base46 v3.0 (for full integration)
• lazy.nvim

Installation

NvChad (recommended)

Add to your plugin specs:

-- lua/plugins/colorscheme.lua
{
  "mohseenrm/brutus",
  lazy = false,
  priority = 1000,
}

Set the theme in chadrc.lua:

-- lua/chadrc.lua
M.base46 = {
  theme = "cobalt-kinetic",
}

Then run :Lazy sync and reopen Neovim. NvChad will compile the base46 highlight cache automatically on startup.

Local development

-- lua/configs/lazy.lua
{
  dev = { path = "~/<path_to_plugin>" },
  -- ...
}

-- lua/plugins/colorscheme.lua
{
  "mohseenrm/brutus",
  dev = true,   -- resolves to ~/<path_to_plugin>/brutus
  lazy = false,
  priority = 1000,
}

Standalone (no NvChad)

-- lazy.nvim
{
  "mohseenrm/brutus",
  lazy = false,
  priority = 1000,
  config = function()
    vim.cmd("colorscheme cobalt-kinetic")
  end,
}

Plugin support

Full highlight coverage — via base46 integrations and polish_hl — for:

Category	Plugins
Syntax	Treesitter (all @ capture groups)
LSP	Diagnostics, virtual text, semantic tokens
Completion	blink.cmp
Fuzzy finding	Telescope, fzf-lua, Snacks picker
File manager	Oil.nvim, nvim-tree
UI	Noice, nvim-notify, which-key, dropbar
Git	Gitsigns, blamer.nvim, diff highlights
Indent	indent-blankline
Motion	Flash.nvim
Markdown	render-markdown.nvim
Notes	Todo-comments
Package manager	lazy.nvim, Mason

Statusline mode colors

Works with NvChad's statusline (arrow separator style):

Mode	Color
Normal	#7bafff cobalt
Insert	#00fbfb cyan
Visual	#ff716c red
Command	#ffd866 yellow
Terminal	#50fa7b green
Replace	#ff9e64 orange

Palette API

The full palette is exposed at vim.g.cobalt_kinetic after the plugin loads, and importable from Lua:

local palette = require("cobalt-kinetic").palette
-- palette.blue  → "#7bafff"
-- palette.cyan  → "#00fbfb"
-- palette.bg    → "#05080f"

License

MIT — see LICENSE.