Problem

I have Ghostty set to theme = Gruvbox Light and WezTerm using a custom gruvbox_light table ported from Windows Terminal (#FBF1C7 cream background, #282828 foreground, exact ANSI). iTerm2’s built-in “Gruvbox Light” was close but not identical, and my initial custom .itermcolors + DynamicProfile only populated the dropdown — Basic Colors stayed #FFFFFF/#000000.

chezmoi managed kept saying “not managed”, cwd=~/tmp turned relative Library/... paths into ~/tmp/Library/..., and Cmd+Q + reopen didn’t load the colors. The session ballooned to 80 tool calls.

What worked

Official preset over custom plist

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/morhetz/gruvbox-contrib/master/iterm2/gruvbox-light.itermcolors \
  -o "$HOME/Library/Application Support/iTerm2/Color Presets/GruvboxLight.itermcolors"
open "$HOME/Library/Application Support/iTerm2/Color Presets/GruvboxLight.itermcolors"

plutil -p confirms #FBF1C7 background. Filename-driven (no explicit “Color Preset Name” key).

chezmoi with absolute target paths (the key fix)

chezmoi add "$HOME/Library/Application Support/iTerm2/Color Presets/GruvboxLight.itermcolors"
chezmoi add "$HOME/Library/Application Support/iTerm2/DynamicProfiles/profiles.json"
chezmoi apply "$HOME/Library/Application Support/iTerm2"

private_Library/... in source maps correctly. Never chezmoi add paths inside sourceDir.

Self-contained DynamicProfile Embed full color dicts (not just Custom Color Preset name) so new windows don’t need “Load Preset”:

{
  "Profiles": [{
    "Guid": "12C59B15-BAFA-4898-87C4-309EFA5F06FA",
    "Name": "Gruvbox Light",
    "Normal Font": "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font 13",
    "Custom Color Preset": "GruvboxLight",
    "Use Bold Font": true,
    "Use Bright Bold": true,
    "Scrollback Lines": 100000,
    "Background Color": { "Red": 0.979, "Green": 0.936, "Blue": 0.733, "Color Space": "Calibrated" },
    ... (all Ansi + Foreground, Cursor, Selection)
  }]
}

Activation

defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 "Default Bookmark Guid" -string "12C59B15-BAFA-4898-87C4-309EFA5F06FA"
osascript -e '
  tell application "iTerm"
    activate
    create window with profile "Gruvbox Light"
  end tell
'

Lessons

Dropdown ≠ applied. Load Preset is mandatory for the current profile.
private_Library + absolute $HOME/Library targets is the chezmoi pattern for macOS (relative paths + ~/tmp cwd = silent failure).
morhetz/gruvbox-contrib is the canonical source — our initial custom plist had sRGB vs Calibrated mismatch.
plutil -extract "Color Preset Name" raw ... or plutil -p to debug naming.
Managed skill iterm2-gruvbox-chezmoi now contains the full repeatable workflow.

Result New iTerm2 windows open with exact parity to WezTerm (Ctrl+Shift+T toggle) and Ghostty (theme = Gruvbox Light). The 80-call war is over.

Sources

morhetz/gruvbox-contrib iterm2/gruvbox-light.itermcolors
iTerm2 Dynamic Profiles docs
Chezmoi private_ discussion
Managed skill: iterm2-gruvbox-chezmoi

Posted from the new iTerm2 window with Gruvbox Light active.