Way out of my zone of expertise, but maybe fontlock or overlay or treesitter? (Sorry to be so vague, I'm shooting in the dark here).

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Syntactic-Font-Lock.html Example from hy-mode: https://github.com/hylang/hy-mode/blob/master/hy-mode.el#L128

font-lock debug tool: https://github.com/Lindydancer/font-lock-studio

maybe helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/ywf3na/looking_for_help_with_definederivedmode_i_just/

Tree-sitter customization: https://emacs-tree-sitter.github.io/syntax-highlighting/customization/

Thanks. I found this package, which will serve as a good starting point https://github.com/istib/rainbow-blocks

Not strictly the same thing, but this twitter thread might be some inspo: https://twitter.com/redblobgames/status/1535372843222896642

Have you updated the packages recently?

there were a couple of changes that broke my previous setup

yes, it was sa fresh install today

namely, embark-define-keymap got deprecated. I'm not sure if you're using Embark, but many people who use Consult do. another thing is that the convention for consult-preview-key has changed.

i.e. if you had before -preview-key (kbd "C-SPC"), you have to do simply: -preview-key "C-SPC" now

I do use embark. but don’t use preview-key

consult-preview-key is a consult var

interestingly helpful command shows consult-line’s doc just fine.

i just looked it up, it’s set to any

the reason I'm telling you to grep for preview key (and not consult-preview-key) is because you may have it like this:

(consult-customize
   consult-ripgrep consult-git-grep consult-grep ...
   :preview-key (kbd "some key"))

so change it to simply :preview-key "some key"

This exact thing happened to me.

and lookup for embark-define-keymap, that fn is now deprecated

also, embark-cycle-key - the same story. I used to have it as embark-cycle-key (kbd "C;") - now it has to be simplified

hm, don’t have :preview-key set and don’t use embark-define-keymap

well something maybe does. You're not using Spacemacs/Doom/etc.?

i have just bound embark-act

nope

(use-package embark
  :bind (("C-S-a" . embark-act)
         :map minibuffer-local-map
         ("C-d" . embark-act))
  :config
  ;; Show Embark actions via which-key
  (setq embark-action-indicator
        (lambda (map)
          (which-key--show-keymap "Embark" map nil nil 'no-paging)
          #'which-key--hide-popup-ignore-command)
        embark-become-indicator embark-action-indicator))

that’s all

I dunno then, try emacs --debug-init

thanks @U0G75ARHC, really strange

all other consult-fns work

consult-line-multi works fine too

let me try updating. Maybe there are some new changes. I am stupid. I don't pin my versions, I just pull the latest vertico/consult/embark from GitHub. Don't be like me. It's a miserable way of computing... lol

haha, I’m the same 🙂

my work machine doesn’t have the issue… it’s just the new one here

maybe I should start doing that…. started using straight to have reproducible builds. then I go about NOT doing straight-freeze-versions

Updated, restarted. Things look good for me. The commit that gave me a headache was this one: https://github.com/minad/consult/commit/9f2ea67ab87f615599a32707c84b4d4287df84d4

But also embark-define-keymap annoyed me for a bit. This is actually an interesting anecdote. So they've deprecated that macro. You have to use defvar-keymap now. And that would be fine. But I'm using Doom. Even though I almost don't use "official" Doom modules, I have "vertico" module enabled. Because it's really good and until now, it served me well. But as I said, I'm stupid. Doom pins the packages in the module. But I deliberately unpined them. So I thought, "well, I guess maybe it's time to write my own, custom completion module for vertico/consult/embark". Which I have, but it does stuff on top of the Doom's module. And I don't even care specifically about that bit in the module that uses embark-define-keymap. So then I scratched my head for a few seconds and just added this at the top of my init:

(defmacro embark-define-keymap (&rest args)
  "Temp. fix for:
"
  `())

Thx for checking, must be some kind of other issue

Interesting

maybe something to do with .elc files?

Hm, that could be a thing