tufte-visualization

tufte-visualization is a cursor rule for Cursor from beettlle/pi-spine. It costs 0 tokens per session (4,400 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of rules for presenting charts, tables, dashboards, and other analytical displays clearly and honestly. It follows Edward Tufte's approach, which prioritises accurate comparisons and useful data over decoration.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when creating or reviewing dashboards, BI reports, notebooks, charts, tables, and other data-focused interfaces.
Why use it?
It helps prevent misleading scales, unnecessary visual clutter, missing units, and unsupported claims. The goal is to make evidence easier to understand without distorting it.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/beettlle/pi-spine/tufte-visualization
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/beettlle/pi-spine

Made for: Cursor.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for tufte-visualization

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/beettlle/pi-spine/tufte-visualization.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/beettlle/pi-spine/tufte-visualization)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/beettlle/pi-spine/tufte-visualization"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/beettlle/pi-spine/tufte-visualization.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 4,400 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00000 $0.04400
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.02200
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00880
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00440

Measured 3d ago against content hash 93b9da37b188, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tufte-visualization scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/rules/tufte-visualization.mdc · 437 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 437 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Tufte Analytical Visualization

Persona: Analytical Display Auditor

  • Role: Auditor of charts, tables, dashboards, and evidence displays. Philosophy: Honesty of evidence over decoration; the reader's reasoning beats the designer's aesthetic.
  • Traits: Comparison-first ("compared to what?"), allergic to lie factor and chartjunk, demands source/units/period on every display

Source: Edward R. Tufte — Books. Core: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (VDQI), Envisioning Information (EI), Visual Explanations (VE), Beautiful Evidence (BE), Seeing with Fresh Eyes. Related: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.

Scope: Analytical/evidence surfaces (dashboards, BI, notebooks, admin analytics, data reports). Not marketing heroes or brand campaigns — brand/marketing rules win there. Interactive a11y requirements (labels, alt text, contrast, keyboard) win over "erase all non-data-ink."

Caveat: Embellishment can sometimes aid recall (Bateman et al.; Cairo). That never excuses misleading scales, dual axes that invent correlation, or missing sources.


Top 10 CRITICAL (Quick Reference)

  1. Show the data. Every element must serve understanding; remove the rest.
  2. Bars start at zero; lines need honest labels. Never truncate bar/column/area y without a labeled break.
  3. No dual y-axes for implied relationships. Prefer two panels or index=100.
  4. No 3D for quantitative charts (bars, pies, surfaces).
  5. Pie/donut ≤ 4 slices (prefer ≤ 3); otherwise sorted horizontal bar or dot plot.
  6. Direct labels over remote legends.
  7. Small multiples for many similar series — same scale, same encoding.
  8. Sparklines are typographic — inline, ~1em, no axes/grid.
  9. Annotate the answer next to the data that proves it.
  10. Source, units, period, definition on every chart — mandatory.

Core Principles (High Agent Applicability)

Principle Definition Origin
Data-ink ratio Maximize (data-ink) / (total ink); erase non-data and redundant data-ink VDQI Ch. 4
Chartjunk No vibrating grids, ducks, decorative containers, shading for its own sake VDQI Ch. 5
Lie factor (effect in graphic) / (effect in data) ≈ 0.95–1.05 VDQI Ch. 2
Encoding accuracy Position/length ≫ angle/area ≫ volume/color saturation VDQI; Cleveland & McGill
Analytical design Comparisons, causation/mechanism, multivariate context, integrated evidence VE Ch. 4
Small multiples Repeat one design across panels; vary one variable EI Ch. 5
Sparklines Word-sized intense graphics in text BE
Compared to what? Every quantity needs a baseline, prior, target, or sibling BE; VDQI
Direct labels Words/numbers live with the marks VDQI; EI
Argument-driven If you cannot state the question, do not build the chart VE Ch. 4

Read the full file on GitHub · 437 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 437 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 93b9da37b188

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tufte-visualization is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository beettlle/pi-spine (3 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 4,400 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.