Introduction

Shikiji 式shiki辞ji is a beautiful and powerful syntax highlighter based on TextMate grammar and themes, the same engine as VS Code's syntax highlighting. Provides very accurate and fast syntax highlighting for almost any mainstream programming language.

No custom RegExp to maintain, no custom CSS to maintain, no custom HTML to maintain. And as your favorite languages and themes in VS Code evolve - your syntax highlighting will evolve too.

Shikiji is a ESM-rewrite of Shiki with quite a few improvements. We aim to merge this project back to Shiki as a milestone update. Check the breaking changes from Shiki and our compatibility build if you are migrating.

About the name, 式shiki辞ji is a Japanese word meaning "Ceremonial Speech". 式shiki is inherited from shiki means "Style" and 辞ji means "Word".

Oh btw, all the code blocks in this site are highlighted by Shikiji, as you'd expect :)

Features

• All grammars/themes/wasm served as pure-ESM, no more CDN, no more assets.
• Portable. Does not rely on Node.js APIs or the filesystem, works in any modern JavaScript runtime.
• ESM-only (CDN Usage, CJS Usage).
• Bundles languages/themes composedly.
• Light/Dark themes support.
• AST-based transformers addons.
• hast support.
• TypeScript Twoslash.
• Shiki-compatible build.

Playground

Here is a little playground for you to try out how Shikiji highlights your code. Unlike other code blocks that ran on the build time, this playground is rendered on the client side in the browser. Themes and languages are loaded on demand.

TypeScript

────────── Vitesse Dark

Playground

Install Shikiji to use it in your project.

Who is using?

Projects that depend on Shikiji (sorted alphabetically):

• Astro
• Expressive Code
• JSX email
• Lobe UI
• Nuxt Content
• Slidev
• VitePress
• Vocs

Bundle Size

You can inspect the bundle size in detail on pkg-size.dev/shikiji.

As of v0.9.11, measured at 21th, December 2023:

Bundle	Size (minified)	Size (gzip)	Notes
shikiji	6.4 MB	1.2 MB	All themes and languages as async chunks
shikiji/bundle/full	6.4 MB	1.2 MB	Same as shikiji
shikiji/bundle/web	3.8 MB	695 KB	All themes and common web languages as async chunks
shikiji/core	100 KB	31 KB	Core engine without any themes or languages, compose on your own
shikiji/wasm	623 KB	231 KB	WASM binary inlined as base64 string