Shared Team Profiles

A repository can recommend one editor-neutral Syntalume appearance to everyone who opens it. VS Code and the optional Syntalume Companion for JetBrains consume the same versioned .auralis/profile.json contract. When both files exist, .syntalume/profile.json is read first; .auralis/profile.json remains fully supported. Writing a recommendation updates an existing .syntalume/profile.json first, otherwise an existing .auralis/profile.json. New repositories use the compatible .auralis/profile.json path so older installations can read it.

Nothing is applied silently. A trusted workspace shows the recommendation and asks each person to Apply, choose Not now, or choose Never for this repo.

Write a profile#

Run:

Syntalume: Write Team Profile Recommendation

Choose a variant, optional note, whether to include your current Tune 2 comfort/style choices, and whether to recommend repository-specific Environment Guard labels. Syntalume writes a version-1 profile such as:

{
  "$schema": "https://auralislab.dev/schema/profile-v1.json",
  "version": 1,
  "variant": "botanica",
  "note": "Matches our Terraform review setup",
  "accent": "#5cc8a0",
  "comfort": {
    "warmth": 1,
    "contrast": 2,
    "saturation": 0
  },
  "style": {
    "comments": "italic",
    "keywords": "bold",
    "workbenchSurface": "layered",
    "bracketStyle": "rainbow"
  },
  "environmentGuard": {
    "enabled": true,
    "productionLabels": ["prod", "live"],
    "stagingLabels": ["staging", "uat"],
    "alert": "statusOnly"
  }
}

Commit the file so the recommendation travels with the repository. VS Code validates .auralis/profile.json against the bundled schema while you edit it.

Profile fields#

  • variant is one of noir, frost, paper, botanica, noir-high-contrast, frost-colorblind, paper-high-contrast, dimmed, or void.
  • comfort carries whole-step warmth, contrast, and saturation values from -5 through 5.
  • style carries Tune 2 choices for comments, keywords, functions, variable contrast, surfaces, borders, brackets, and density.
  • environmentGuard carries only local guard policy. Production and staging labels are literal strings, limited in number and length, and never sent to a service.

Version 1 is strict: unsupported versions, unknown fields, invalid accents, out-of-range comfort values, and unsupported enum choices reject the whole recommendation instead of partially applying it.

Apply behavior#

When you choose Apply in VS Code:

  • the Complete Experience profile is written to Workspace scope, leaving your global setup untouched;
  • Tune and style values are written as reversible, theme-scoped customizations;
  • guard labels become escaped workspace patterns, and the optional alert mode is applied only to that workspace.

The consent detail for VS Code is generated from the actual Complete Experience write plan, then adds every changed comfort and style value. That keeps themes, icons, font ligatures, all core file associations, editor/diff/ SCM/terminal/chat values, ambience, and Guard recommendations visible before consent. Complete Experience, Guard, and Tune apply as one recoverable Workspace transaction: a failure unwinds completed writes, while exact-reset ownership is retained if VS Code itself prevents a full rollback.

The offer appears once per file content and returns only if the profile changes. Reads are capped at 1 MiB before parsing, and the offer memory keeps only a short local fingerprint—not the repository's profile content. Set auralis.teamProfile.enabled to false to suppress automatic offers, or run Syntalume: Apply Team Profile Recommendation to inspect the current file manually.

In the optional JetBrains Companion, Review and apply shared profile shows the same consent diff before changing anything. JetBrains applies the variant, project accent, Guard recommendation, all three comfort axes, common comment/keyword/function typography, variable contrast, dimmed or monochrome brackets, and compact or comfortable editor line spacing through public editor scheme APIs. Adjusted text retains a 4.5:1 contrast floor.

Three boundaries are explicit in that preview:

  • workbenchSurface and borderStrength require declarative Look and Feel resources, so a runtime Companion cannot apply them faithfully;
  • bracketStyle: rainbow requires multi-level behavior without a stable public runtime API, so it remains unchanged;
  • editor schemes are IDE-wide in JetBrains. The derived scheme has project-owned metadata and a stable local name, but selecting it affects the current IDE application.

Those fields stay in the portable profile and are reported as not applied; the Companion does not invent an approximation. Exact reset restores the captured Look and Feel and scheme only while they still match what the profile applied. A later manual theme switch or edit to the derived scheme wins.

Legacy files using profile, tune, and a boolean environmentGuard remain readable through an explicit, safe migration step. The consent diff names that migration before Apply, and the next write uses version 1, so teams can migrate without a flag day.