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Scriptorium

by ouatis
Screenshot of the Scriptorium Obsidian theme
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Code

Description

This theme supports Dark Mode
This theme supports Light Mode

README file from

Github

Scriptorium

A quiet desk for long thoughts.

Chinese | Japanese

Scriptorium: paper, type and thought. Concept illustration, not an Obsidian screenshot.

A warm, minimal Obsidian theme for long-form reading and writing.

Scriptorium keeps the writing surface primary: soft paper tones, restrained contrast, quiet workspace chrome, flatter tags and callouts, and typography tuned for mixed CJK and Latin notes.

Paper, light and connections: Scriptorium shares quiet shapes and a visual rhythm with Desk Lamp and Skill Switchboard. Each product works independently; neither plugin is required to use the theme.

[!NOTE] Scriptorium is a personal aesthetic. It does not aim to support the Style Settings plugin.

Preview

Layout illustration, not an in-app screenshot. The cover above is also concept artwork; the active theme, fonts and your settings determine the appearance inside Obsidian.

Install

  1. Search for Scriptorium in Obsidian Community Themes.
  2. Click Install and use.

Manual install: copy theme.css and manifest.json into .obsidian/themes/Scriptorium/, then select Scriptorium in Appearance -> Themes.

Design

  • Scriptorium is drawn in the IBM Plex family — install IBM Plex Sans, IBM Plex Serif and IBM Plex Mono (or the full IBM Plex release) and they apply automatically.
  • Set a different font in Appearance and your choice leads the stack; IBM Plex and the CJK fallbacks follow.
  • Document surfaces stay light: texture, shadow, and accent color are deliberately restrained.
  • Navigation, search, menus, tags, callouts, and embeds stay quiet so prose remains central.
  • The theme ships as a single theme.css with no external dependencies.

Design Principles

Guidelines the theme is edited against, kept for future maintenance:

  • Keep the warm paper palette restrained.
  • Keep the surface clean enough that texture supports the page instead of competing with it.
  • Prefer typographic hierarchy over heavy chrome.
  • Keep auto-hide behavior limited, predictable, and easy to ignore when reading.
  • Use accent colors carefully when they carry semantic meaning in body-sized text.
  • Keep callouts, embeds, and floating UI aligned with the same material language, but avoid making routine operational UI feel like stacked cards.
  • Keep tags quiet enough to annotate prose without competing with headings or links.
  • Treat reading comfort as more important than decorative novelty.

Development

The readable source lives in src/theme.css. Edit it, then run npm run build — esbuild minifies it into the shipped theme.css, which keeps the file lean for the community-store size check. npm run lint runs stylelint against the source.

Personal adjustments go through CSS snippets — snippet-example.css is a commented tour of the tokens a snippet may safely touch, with the palette ramps and the override tiers explained.

Created by @ouatis. Inspired by Sanctum and Baseline.

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