Customization

A shipcard card is shaped by three things: the theme (its color scheme), the size (its dimensions), and the language colors in the bar. There’s no config file — everything is a flag or a built-in default.

Themes

Two themes ship in the box, selected with --theme:

shipcard owner/repo --theme dark    # default
shipcard owner/repo --theme light

Each theme is a fixed palette tuned to match GitHub’s own UI colors:

Token	`dark`	`light`	Used for
background (gradient from → to)	`#0d1117` → `#161b22`	`#ffffff` → `#f6f8fa`	The card’s diagonal background.
text	`#f0f6fc`	`#1f2328`	Repo name, stat values, legend names.
muted	`#8b949e`	`#636c76`	Description, stat glyphs, legend percentages.
accent	`#58a6ff`	`#0969da`	The top bar and the `owner/` line.
track	`#21262d`	`#eaeef2`	The empty language-bar track behind the segments.

The background is rendered as a diagonal gradient, with a thin accent strip along the top edge.

Sizes

--size controls the card’s dimensions:

Size	Dimensions	Best for
`og` (default)	1200 × 630	Open Graph / social previews — the standard `og:image` ratio.
`card`	800 × 320	A compact banner for a README header or a tighter layout.

shipcard owner/repo --size og      # default, social
shipcard owner/repo --size card    # compact

The card size scales every element (padding, font sizes, the language bar) down proportionally, and shows up to four legend entries instead of six, so the compact card stays uncluttered.

The language bar

The primary languages render as a single rounded, color-coded bar with a legend of name percent% underneath. Up to six languages are shown (the rest fold into the proportions), sorted largest first. Each segment’s width is its share of the total, and the bar always fills its full width even when the percentages don’t sum to exactly 100.

The color map

Colors come from a built-in table that mirrors the canonical palette GitHub uses for its language bars. Any language not in the table falls back to a neutral grey (#8b949e) so the card always renders sensibly.

Language	Color	Language	Color
TypeScript	`#3178c6`	JavaScript	`#f1e05a`
Python	`#3572a5`	Rust	`#dea584`
Go	`#00add8`	Java	`#b07219`
C	`#555555`	C++	`#f34b7d`
C#	`#178600`	Ruby	`#701516`
PHP	`#4f5d95`	Swift	`#f05138`
Kotlin	`#a97bff`	Dart	`#00b4ab`
Scala	`#c22d40`	Shell	`#89e051`
HTML	`#e34c26`	CSS	`#563d7c`
SCSS	`#c6538c`	Vue	`#41b883`
Svelte	`#ff3e00`	Elixir	`#6e4a7e`
Haskell	`#5e5086`	Lua	`#000080`
Perl	`#0298c3`	Objective-C	`#438eff`
R	`#198ce7`	Julia	`#a270ba`
Clojure	`#db5855`	Zig	`#ec915c`
Markdown	`#083fa1`	JSON	`#292929`
YAML	`#cb171e`	Dockerfile	`#384d54`
Makefile	`#427819`	(unknown)	`#8b949e`

The full map (and the neutral fallback) is exported as LANGUAGE_COLORS, NEUTRAL_COLOR, and colorForLanguage() — see the Programmatic API if you want to reuse or extend it.

How languages are measured

GitHub mode uses the repo’s GitHub languages API — bytes per language as GitHub classifies them.
Local mode scans file extensions and accumulates file sizes per language, using a built-in extension → language map (.ts/.tsx → TypeScript, .py → Python, .rs → Rust, and so on). Files whose extension isn’t a known code type are ignored so they don’t pollute the breakdown.

Either way the raw { language: bytes } map is normalized the same way, so the two modes produce visually consistent bars.

Optional: AI summary

By default the card uses the repository’s own description and makes no network calls beyond fetching repo metadata. With --summary, shipcard instead asks an OpenAI-compatible chat-completions endpoint for a single punchy line (max ~80 characters) describing the repo, and uses that as the card’s description.

It’s strictly bring-your-own-key: the request only happens when you pass --summary, and it needs OPENAI_API_KEY.

OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-xxx shipcard abdulmunimjemal/shipcard --summary -o card.svg

Point it at any compatible API

The endpoint defaults to OpenAI (https://api.openai.com/v1) with the gpt-4o-mini model. Use --base-url to target any OpenAI-compatible gateway — a self-hosted proxy, Azure OpenAI, or a local server:

shipcard owner/repo --summary --base-url https://my-gateway.example/v1 -o card.svg

If no key is set, or the request fails, shipcard exits 1 with an error rather than silently falling back — so a broken summary never produces a misleading card. (The library function generateSummary also lets you override the model and apiKey directly; see the Programmatic API.)