figure-qa

figure-qa is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from neuromechanist/research-skills. It costs 115 tokens per session (822 once invoked), scanned A, original, BSD-3-Clause.

A skill for checking scientific figures against journal submission requirements. It combines measurable checks, such as fonts, colors, geometry, transparency, and resolution, with a separate visual review of readability and appearance.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review figures for label legibility, alignment, palette correctness, image resolution, transparency, and overall paper readiness.
Why use it?
It helps find technical or presentation problems before a figure is submitted to a scientific journal.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT variable, but also reads ~/.codex or $CODEX_HOME. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions Claude Code; mentions Codex.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the figures plugin — 7 skills, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Use it to review figures for label legibility, alignment, palette correctness, image resolution, transparency, and overall paper readiness.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add neuromechanist/research-skills
Claude Code
/plugin install figures

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install figures, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 1 agent.

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 figure-qa

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/neuromechanist/research-skills/figure-qa/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/neuromechanist/research-skills/figure-qa)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/neuromechanist/research-skills/figure-qa"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/neuromechanist/research-skills/figure-qa/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for figure-qa

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/neuromechanist/research-skills/figure-qa"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/neuromechanist/research-skills/figure-qa.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 115 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 822 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00115 $0.00822
Opus 5 $0.00057 $0.00411
Sonnet 5 $0.00023 $0.00164
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00082

Measured 12d ago against content hash 8dcf421dda7e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

figure-qa 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 12d 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.

plugins/figures/skills/figure-qa/SKILL.md · 32 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 32 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Figure QA

Routes a scientific figure to an independent, fresh-context QA reviewer that detects the input type, runs the deterministic checks (fonts, palette, geometry, alpha, DPI) via helper scripts, and adds a VLM rubric judgment for the aesthetic dimensions. This skill is a thin dispatcher: the detection logic, exit-code contract, VLM rubric, and report format all live in references/figure-qa-procedure.md, and the deterministic engine lives in the figures plugin's agents/figure-qa-scripts/.

When to use

Activate when a figure needs a journal-submission QA pass, or proactively after a figure-generation skill (scientific-figure, svg-figure, svg-primitives, transparent-icons, ai-full-figure, plot-styling) produces output, unless the caller passes no-qa.

Why a fresh-context reviewer

A QA pass is more trustworthy from a reviewer that did not just author the figure. Run it in a separate context and pass only the figure path, input type (if known), and target journal. On tools without subagents, run the procedure inline.

Dispatch

In every branch the reviewer follows references/figure-qa-procedure.md (strict separation: scripts own ground-truth measurements, VLM owns aesthetic judgment).

  • Claude Code: Task(subagent_type: "figure-qa", ...) passing the figure path and target journal. Honor a no-qa opt-out by returning immediately.
  • Codex CLI: plugin installation exposes this skill, not a Codex subagent. To use a fresh-context Codex reviewer, first copy agents/templates/figure-qa.toml to ~/.codex/agents/ or .codex/agents/, then invoke that configured agent if the current Codex surface supports /agent. If no Codex subagent is configured or available, use the fallback branch.
  • Copilot CLI: plugin installation exposes this skill and, through .github/plugin/plugin.json, the .agent.md reviewer in agents/templates/. Invoke that configured agent when the current Copilot surface supports custom agents. If running outside a plugin install, copy agents/templates/figure-qa.agent.md to .github/agents/ or ~/.copilot/agents/. If no custom agent is available, use the fallback branch.
  • Fallback (no subagent support, or an interactive in-thread check): first locate the procedure ($CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/figure-qa/references, else find . -type d -path '*/skills/figure-qa/references' | head -1); if it cannot be found, stop and tell the user to install the figures plugin rather than guessing checks. Then follow references/figure-qa-procedure.md directly.

Read the full file on GitHub · 32 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 12d ago First seen · 32 lines · 115 tokens per session scan A 8dcf421dda7e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

figure-qa is a skill published in the GitHub repository neuromechanist/research-skills (45 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed BSD-3-Clause. It adds 115 tokens to every session and 822 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. 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 2026-08-30.

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