storytelling-with-data

storytelling-with-data is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from sammcj/agentic-coding. It costs 69 tokens per session (3,360 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide for shaping data visualisations and data-based communications around a clear story for a specific audience. It covers charts, dashboards, infographics, presentations, and reports.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan, review, or improve the message, narrative structure, and visual design of data-driven work.
Why use it?
It helps decide what the audience needs to understand or do before choosing a chart or layout. This keeps a visual communication focused instead of merely displaying data.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/sammcj/agentic-coding/storytelling-with-data
Any agent
npx skills add sammcj/agentic-coding --skill storytelling-with-data
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sammcj/agentic-coding

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 storytelling-with-data

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sammcj/agentic-coding/storytelling-with-data.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/sammcj/agentic-coding/storytelling-with-data)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sammcj/agentic-coding/storytelling-with-data"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sammcj/agentic-coding/storytelling-with-data.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 69 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,360 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 5.1 $0.00069 $0.03360
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.01680
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00672
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00336

Measured 6d ago against content hash 2ff2dc722cb6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

storytelling-with-data 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 6d 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.

Skills/storytelling-with-data/SKILL.md · 245 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 245 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Storytelling with Data (SWD) Skill

Apply the 6-lesson SWD framework from Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic for visual and design decisions, combined with narrative storytelling frameworks (Dykes, Duarte, Miller, Dicks, Cron, Heath) for structuring compelling stories that drive action.

Format-agnostic by design: This skill covers what to communicate and how to design it. Pair it with format-specific skills that handle output mechanics (e.g. pptx skill for slide decks, a web framework for dashboards).


The SWD 6-Lesson Framework

Every data communication task should be evaluated against these 6 lessons, applied in order:

Lesson 1: Understand the Context

Before touching any tool, answer three questions:

  1. WHO is your audience? What do they care about? What's their relationship to you? What will motivate them?
  2. WHAT do you need them to know or do? Define the single action or takeaway.
  3. HOW will you communicate? Live presentation? Email? Dashboard? This changes everything about design.

Key techniques:

  • The 3-Minute Story: Can you explain your entire message in 3 minutes? If not, you haven't distilled it enough.
  • The Big Idea: One sentence that articulates your unique point of view, what's at stake, and what you want the audience to do. Format: [situation] + [complication] → [recommended action].
  • Storyboard first: Sketch your flow on sticky notes or paper before opening any tool. Rearrange freely.
  • Exploratory ≠ Explanatory: The audience sees only the explanatory output - the curated insight, not the full analysis journey. Never dump exploratory analysis on your audience.

When reviewing existing work, ask:

  • Is there a clear "so what?" on every chart, panel, or section?
  • Could the audience state the key message after a 3-second glance?
  • Is there a specific call to action?

Lesson 2: Choose an Appropriate Visual Display

Match the visual to the message. You can handle the vast majority of business communications with just a few chart types.

Read the full file on GitHub · 245 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files 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. 6d ago First seen · 245 lines · 69 tokens per session scan A 2ff2dc722cb6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

storytelling-with-data is a skill published in the GitHub repository sammcj/agentic-coding (159 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 69 tokens to every session and 3,360 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 2026-08-30.

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