figure-style

Publication-Grade Figure Rules

A checklist for correct, legible, internally-consistent scientific figures. This skill does not impose a visual house style — frame, font, and palette are parameters. Once the kernel is loaded (below), call k.apply_figure_style() before plotting.

Loading the kernel

The helpers live in kernel.py next to this file. It is not auto-injected — import it in each Bash python heredoc (each run is a fresh process), then call helpers as k.apply_figure_style(), k.panel_crops(fig), …:

import importlib.util
spec = importlib.util.spec_from_file_location("fs_kernel", "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/kernel.py")
k = importlib.util.module_from_spec(spec)
spec.loader.exec_module(k)

§0 Scope

Load trigger. This skill is for final-deliverable figures — those shipping in a report, paper, or export, or saved as a file that will be kept — not for exploratory/intermediate plots (quick looks, EDA, sanity checks), which are drawn plainly without it. Once loaded, "every plot" below means every plot you render toward the deliverable.

§1–§3, §8, and §9 are correctness — they apply to every plot, in every context, and have no aesthetic content. §4–§7 are guidance — defaults that produce a clean result but that a deliberate alternative can override (individual rules inside §4–§7 that state a factual/perceptual invariant — e.g. §4.4 semantic-zero centring, §4.5 CVD, §6.9 leader anchoring — still bind). This skill is the inner tier (make one plot good); figure-composer assembles these panels into one multi-panel figure and paper-narrative reviews a whole paper's figure arc — the outer two tiers of the stack.

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§1 Data fidelity & self-consistency

1.1 Excluded rows. A row marked excluded or flagged in the source data is either omitted entirely or drawn with a visually distinct open/hatched marker and named in the key. It never enters a summary statistic plotted alongside the included rows.

1.2 Comparable conditions only. Arms measured under non-comparable conditions (different N, epoch budget, initialisation, protocol) are not plotted as visual peers. Separate them with a facet break or a marker on the label, and state the difference once in the caption.