ndots/openspec/changes/archive/2026-07-24-swaync-groovebox-theme/proposal.md

Why

The current swaync styling is hardcoded in modules/home-manager/swaync/default.nix with a single gruvbox palette and a flat, square-ish look. The user wants a new "Groovebox" theme that feels like iOS notifications — glassy, rounded, with an app icon, title, truncated body, and a small timestamp — and a notification tray that pops from the bottom-left corner. Notification urgency (low / normal / critical) should drive the title color and the border accent so the priority is readable at a glance. The existing swaync Nix module also bakes its colors into the store, which is the pattern the archived theme-switch change set out to undo; this change finishes that work for swaync by moving the stylesheet + colors into ~/.config/colorschemes/groovebox/swaync/ so future themes are dotfiles, not Nix edits.

What Changes

• NEW ~/.config/colorschemes/groovebox/ theme directory with a swaync/ subdir containing style.css (iOS-style layout) and colors.css (the Groovebox palette).
• NEW swaync Nix module is thinned down: it drops the inline style.css block and switches to sourcing ~/.config/swaync/style.css + colors.css from the active theme dir via xdg.configFile + lib.file.mkOutOfStoreSymlink (the same pattern the archived theme-switch change planned).
• MODIFIED modules/home-manager/swaync/default.nix settings: positionX = "left", positionY = "bottom", notification-window-width widened, transition-time bumped for the slide-up feel, and any other layout knobs needed for the iOS look.
• NEW stylesheet implements iOS aesthetic: rounded glass cards (large border-radius, bg with alpha + blur-friendly shadow), horizontal layout (icon left, title + body right), title color follows urgency (low = cyan, normal = white, critical = red), border accent matches title color, top-right timestamp in small caps, control center tray is blackish with the same glass treatment, notification close button is a chip in the top-right.
• NEW ~/.config/colorschemes/groovebox/swaync/colors.css defines the Groovebox palette: dark base (#14171c background, #1a1d24 card), light text (#e6e6e6), and a set of vibrant accent colors for urgency (red #ff5e7a, amber #f5a623, green #5fe1a7, cyan #5cd6ff, purple #b58cff).
• MODIFIED hosts/jpporta-nixos/home.nix keeps services.swaync.enable = true; (no host-side change required beyond the module rewrite).
• NOTE the per-theme symlink swap + swaync-client --reload-css reload mechanism is owned by the (still-pending) theme-switch change. This change ships Groovebox as the first theme under the new layout so theme-switch groovebox works once that script lands; the theme-switch script itself is not in scope here.

Capabilities

New Capabilities

• swaync-groovebox-theme: the iOS-styled swaync theme (Groovebox palette + new layout) shipped as the first theme under the ~/.config/colorschemes/<theme>/swaync/ layout.

Modified Capabilities

• None. Existing power-profile-management spec is unrelated. The archived theme-colors-sources spec from 2026-07-13-theme-switch is not a current openspec/specs/ entry, so it isn't a "modified" target — but the intent of D4 there (swaync reads colors from the active theme dir, not from Nix) is satisfied for the Groovebox theme by this change.

Impact

• Code:
  • modules/home-manager/swaync/default.nix — thin: drop the inline style.css, point xdg.configFile."swaync/style.css" and xdg.configFile."swaync/colors.css" at out-of-store symlinks to ~/.config/colorschemes/.active/swaync/.
  • ~/.config/colorschemes/groovebox/swaync/style.css — new (iOS layout).
  • ~/.config/colorschemes/groovebox/swaync/colors.css — new (Groovebox palette).
  • ~/.config/colorschemes/groovebox/meta — new (name=Groovebox\nmode=dark) for future theme-picker compatibility.
• System: swaync-client --reload-css becomes the live-reload path (no home-manager switch on tweaks). The symlink target depends on ~/.config/colorschemes/.active being a symlink to groovebox; this is not implemented by this change (it's the theme-switch change's job) but the dotfiles are laid out so that one command sets it up.
• First-run order:
  1. Apply this change (home-manager switch).
  2. Manually point ~/.config/colorschemes/.active at groovebox (or wait for the theme-switch change to do it).
  3. swaync-client --reload-css (or restart swaync).
• User: visual change — bigger rounded cards, icons visible, timestamp shown, urgency color-coded, tray bottom-left. No new commands, no new dependencies.
• Out of scope: theme-switch script, picker, hook, gsettings flip, hyprland blur rules for the new swaync notification geometry (the existing blur rules in modules/home-manager/hyprland/default.nix still match the swaync-notification-window namespace and don't need to change).