About ThemeLab

ThemeLab is a browser-based VS Code theme editor — built entirely in React and TypeScript as a technical showcase by Joe Hunter, a full-stack developer based in Spain.

The idea is simple: most VS Code theme tools are abstract JSON editors. ThemeLab renders a pixel-accurate simulation of the VS Code interface and lets you edit theme tokens visually, seeing every change in real time before exporting a valid .json theme file.

Why it was built

Developers spend hours in their editor every day, yet most never customise their theme beyond picking one from the marketplace. ThemeLab removes the friction — no extensions, no terminal, no JSON hunting. Just open the browser and design.

For Joe, it's also a deliberate technical exercise: rendering a convincing editor UI in pure React, managing live CSS variable theming at scale, and shipping something that feels premium with zero UI framework dependencies.

Tech stack

About Joe Hunter

Joe is a full-stack developer with a focus on developer tooling, UI engineering and clean, readable codebases. He builds things that developers actually want to use.

See more work at joehunter.es →