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Customization: Design & Theme

PulseCAD lets each community theme every terminal independently. Open the editor from Admin → Design & Theme. It is built like a small website builder: pick a terminal, edit its colors, and watch a live copy of the real page repaint as you work.

Themes are per terminal and per mode

There is no single global palette. Each terminal (Dispatch, LEO, Fire, Tow, Civilian, Court, Records) has its own colors, and within a terminal you edit Light and Dark palettes separately. What you change is scoped to the surface you are on.

The editor layout

The page is a split layout: a color editor on one side and a live preview on the other.

  • A tab per terminal runs across the top: Dispatch, LEO, Fire, Tow, Civilian, Court, and Records. Switch tabs to theme a different surface. Each tab carries its own set of colors and its own descriptions of what each color drives.
  • Separate Light and Dark palettes. Toggle which mode you are editing. Light and dark are edited independently, so a color that reads well on a dark board and one that reads well on a light portal can be set to different values.
  • Per-color controls with plain-language descriptions telling you exactly what each color affects on that terminal (background, panels, accent, status chips, text, borders, and so on).

Live preview

Alongside the editor is a live iframe preview of the actual page for the selected terminal - not a mockup or a swatch grid, but a rendered copy of the real surface. As you change a color, the preview repaints so you see the true result in context.

The preview follows the mode you are editing

Switch between editing Light and Dark and the preview follows, rendering the terminal in that mode. That way you are always looking at the palette you are actually changing.

The preview is a static, read-only rendering. It shows the terminal's chrome and layout (including gated areas) so you can judge your palette without touching or exposing any live data.

Inspect mode

Finding which control drives a particular element can be fiddly on a busy terminal, so the editor has an Inspect mode. Turn it on and click an element in the preview - the editor jumps straight to the color control that drives it. Use it when you can see the thing you want to recolor but are not sure which color token it maps to.

Saving and resetting

  • Changes save per surface - saving on the LEO tab affects only the LEO terminal. Move to another tab to theme it separately.
  • A reset returns a terminal's palette to the PulseCAD defaults if you want to start over.

Design directives still apply

Themes change colors, not copy or iconography. Keep to the house rules elsewhere in the product: no em dashes in visible strings, no decorative emojis (the UI uses line icons), and legible contrast in both light and dark.

Community branding

Broader branding for your community lives nearby in the Admin Console, separate from the per-terminal color themes: