Headless/hosted deploys run the dashboard server without COLORTERM in
the process environment, so chalk inside the PTY-spawned TUI child
downgraded every skin hex color to the xterm 256 palette — the default
skin's bronze banner border (#CD7F32) snapped to palette 173 (#D7875F,
salmon red) and the gold caduceus rendered red/yellow on fresh cloud
instances. Local launches never reproduced it because the operator's
interactive terminal leaks COLORTERM=truecolor into the server env.
xterm.js always renders 24-bit RGB, so the dashboard PTY child should
always advertise truecolor: backfill COLORTERM=truecolor in
_resolve_chat_argv via setdefault (an explicit operator value wins).
Verified with a clean-env PTY probe of the real TUI binary:
no COLORTERM -> 0 truecolor SGRs / 165 palette-256 (salmon 38;5;173);
with the backfill -> 166 truecolor SGRs, exact bronze 38;2;205;127;50.
Teknium
5633fa19b8