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colorize

Syntax-highlighted cat and less. The plugin provides ccat (colorize_cat) and cless (colorize_less), backed here by chroma — installed via the Brewfile, which notes it's the conflict-free choice (single Go binary, no Python pygments dependency chain).

CommandDoes
ccat file.yamlsyntax-highlighted cat
cless script.pysyntax-highlighted less

Pro tips​

  • ccat is for eyeballing config files: ccat ~/.config/ghostty/config, ccat docker-compose.yml. The lexer is guessed from the filename, and stdin works too (curl -s $url | ccat).
  • cless keeps highlighting while paging — it wires colorize_cat in as a LESSOPEN preprocessor, so big files stream through less -R normally.
  • The default style is emacs, which looks washed out on a dark background. Set ZSH_COLORIZE_STYLE="catppuccin-mocha" (chroma ships it) to match Ghostty.
  • If colors look 8-bit, set ZSH_COLORIZE_CHROMA_FORMATTER=terminal16m for true-color output — Ghostty handles it fine; the default formatter is plain terminal.
  • Note the tool-picking quirk: the plugin prefers pygmentize if it's ever installed. Pin ZSH_COLORIZE_TOOL="chroma" if a stray pip install starts changing your colors.
  • Plain cat stays untouched — scripts and pipes keep byte-exact output, and the eza plugin already covers pretty listings.