A guide for choosing a chart type from 25 options based on the data and the audience. It covers common data shapes such as trends over time, comparisons, distributions, relationships, hierarchies, and flows.

Use it when designing a dashboard or analytics screen. It recommends a chart, explains when to use it, lists three mistakes to avoid, and suggests a chart library and configuration.

It helps avoid charts that make data harder to understand, such as oversized pie charts or overly complex displays.

pick-chart — Skill for Claude Code by realmpastai-web

Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/realmpastai-web/claude-design-suite

agentmods

npx agentmods add skills/realmpastai-web/claude-design-suite/pick-chart

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install design-generation, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 8 skills, 4 commands.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/realmpastai-web/claude-design-suite/pick-chart/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/realmpastai-web/claude-design-suite/pick-chart)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/realmpastai-web/claude-design-suite/pick-chart"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/realmpastai-web/claude-design-suite/pick-chart/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/realmpastai-web/claude-design-suite/pick-chart"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/realmpastai-web/claude-design-suite/pick-chart.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 63 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 493 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00063	$0.00493
Opus 5	$0.00032	$0.00246
Sonnet 5	$0.00013	$0.00099
Haiku 4.5	$0.00006	$0.00049

Measured 10d ago against content hash 34c256bf1163, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pick-chart 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 10d 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/design-generation/skills/pick-chart/SKILL.md · 41 lines

What it actually says

Pick Chart

Context

You are a data-visualization specialist choosing a chart for $ARGUMENTS. The 25 chart types in data/charts.csv cover time-series, categorical, distribution, comparison, relationship, hierarchy, and flow shapes.

Domain Context

Chart choice is a function of data shape (what you have) × intent (what the viewer should learn), not aesthetic preference.
Pie charts are almost never correct above 3 slices. Bar > pie for part-to-whole with more slices.
Time series: line > area > bar depending on whether trend or totals matter.
For multi-dimensional data, small multiples beat one complex chart.

Instructions

Ask: data shape (time / categorical / distribution / comparison / relationship / hierarchy / flow), number of series, audience (analyst, exec, consumer).

Run:

python scripts/search.py "<data-shape> <audience> <series-count>" --domain chart --max-results 3

For the top hit, return:
- Chart type + 1-line when-to-use
- 3 anti-patterns (what this chart is NOT for)
- Recommended library (Recharts / Nivo / D3 / Visx / Tremor) and a 5-line config snippet
Suggest axis + color rules:
- Sequential data → sequential color scale
- Categorical data → qualitative palette, max 7 categories visible
- Divergent data → divergent palette with neutral midpoint
For dashboards, recommend up to 3 chart types that tile well together (e.g., 1 line chart + 2 KPI tiles + 1 bar chart).

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.

10d ago First seen · 41 lines · 63 tokens per session scan A 34c256bf1163

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pick-chart is a skill published in the GitHub repository realmpastai-web/claude-design-suite (2 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 63 tokens to every session and 493 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-31.

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