UI as data

tratto's interface is declared as data: the menus, the texts, the themes, the settings screen, the layouts of the sidebar and the history, the clone flow. The app ships these files and reads your own versions from the configuration folder, so a change does not need a new build.

What applies while tratto runs

Two kinds of files are watched and applied within a moment of saving them:

**style.json:** colours, corner radii, strokes, text sizes and weights, fonts, icons and spacing, for both appearances or separately for light and dark. This is what the copilot changes when you ask it to restyle tratto.
**The layout/ folder:** the layouts of the refs sidebar, the project sidebar, the history columns, the repository view and the notifications.

What applies at the next start

Everything else is read when tratto starts, so restart it after a change:

settings.json, and the per-profile and per-project settings;
themes/*.json, to adjust one of the built-in themes: see Themes;
locales/*.json, to change texts or add a language;
flows/clone.json, to replace the clone flow;
the IDE's layout, project types and file icons.

The full list is in Configuration files.

What is not yours to change yet

The menus and their keys (menu.json), the settings schema, the AI prompts for commits and the What's New list ship with the app and have no override yet: see Menus & shortcuts.

When a file is wrong

tratto reads every file strictly: an unknown key, a missing key or invalid JSON is an error. A wrong file of yours is skipped, the built-in one is used, and the reason, with the file and the place in it, shows at the bottom of the settings. A wrong style.json or layout keeps the last good version while it tells you why.

A settings.json written by a newer tratto is read but never overwritten by an older one.

Plugins

Plugins are not available yet: the app does not load any.