1. Take in a filename as input 2. Find the file's extension 3. Look at the corresponding config file, and load the regex-color mappings 4. Load the file, with each character loaded as an object - character, color 5. Apply the regexes, one by one, to the file. if a regex matches a certain group of characters, those characters have the corresponding color. 6. Print the file, char-by-char.