BluEclipse
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BluEclipse developer tools
CRT for VS Code: A Phosphor Display in Your Editor
Scanlines, glow and a colour palette borrowed from hardware that has not been manufactured in thirty years — applied to the editor you actually work in. Not every tool has to solve a problem.
- Category
- Developer tool, VS Code extension
- Platform
- Visual Studio Code
CRT is a VS Code extension that transforms the editor's appearance with custom scanlines, glow, colour and retro display effects — a cathode-ray tube rendered in software, wrapped around your actual working files.
Most of what BluEclipse builds answers to a business case. This one answers to a different and entirely legitimate question, which is whether the thing you look at for nine hours a day could be more fun to look at.
Built where the work happens
Developers already move constantly between terminals, browsers, documentation, dashboards, source-control tools and editors. Every one of those switches costs a small amount of attention, and small amounts of attention are the entire budget.
So CRT lives inside the editor rather than beside it. Running as a VS Code extension means it hooks into the environment directly, is exposed through interactions developers already know, and installs and updates the same way everything else in their setup does. Nothing to launch, nothing to keep open, nothing to remember.
Good developer tooling removes friction without becoming friction itself.
Small on purpose
Editor extensions have a well-documented tendency to grow into platforms — settings panels, background services, telemetry, an onboarding flow, eventually a sidebar of their own. CRT is built on the opposite instinct: do one useful thing, keep the interaction simple, and avoid services that are not required.
It is the same principle behind our other small tools. Something that runs continuously in an environment you care about has to earn its place continuously, and the easiest way to do that is to stay small enough that nobody has to think about it.
Why we built it
Most useful developer tools begin with a version of the same thought — I do this repeatedly, why is it not easier — and CRT began with the less useful but more enjoyable cousin of it. The tooling is built around where the work already happens, rather than asking the developer to go somewhere else for it.
It is one of BluEclipse's experiments in small, focused utilities built directly into real workflows. This one just happens to glow.
Built by BluEclipse for Visual Studio Code.
For developers
If your editor theme is the one thing you have never been precious about, this is an invitation to reconsider.
For technology clients
Editor extensions, internal developer tooling and the small utilities that make a team's day-to-day environment better.