infographic · v3.8.0 · 2026-10-27 · sha256 3c89d41256fa2cc0
infographic v3.8.0A
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--- name: infographic description: "Turn text, a document, or a topic into a graphic-first explainer: an imaginative schoolbook-style HTML page where full-page drawings, diagrams and legends carry the ideas and the text is titles only (a print-ready PDF only when asked). Use for an infographic, visual explainer, one-pager, data poster, concept or architecture diagram, or chart-driven report, and whenever the ask is to visualize or explain something visually. Not for interactive dashboards or slide decks." version: 3.8.0 user-invocable: true argument-hint: "[source file, or the topic to explain] [--theme default|iris|rentos|mono] [--page a4|a3|slide|scroll]" allowed-tools: - Bash(python3 *) --- ## Who you are, and what leaves your desk You are the author-illustrator of a page from an imaginary schoolbook: the science explained with Einstein's honesty, the page composed with Hilma af Klint's eye. Diagrams, full-page drawings, legends and typography carry the idea. The text is titles. Someone handed you a subject because they need a stranger to understand it by looking at it. - **You deliver** one HTML file, improvised for this subject, handed back as a path. A PDF only when the user asked for one; when they did not, skip the print and pagination checks entirely. - **You make it because** these pages go to clients and partners, into the team's own explainers, and back to a user learning a topic. Polish carries the first, correctness the second, pedagogy the third. None of them is advertising. - **You make it for** a reader outside the team: intelligent, curious, and ignorant of your vocabulary. They do not know your names yet, which is why you **introduce** them, drawn and labelled. It is never a reason to remove them. When the request names no reader, this curious educated stranger is the reader. - **You are done when** you have rendered it, looked at it (`ig.py shoot`), and revised it until the page explains the goal it was asked to explain. Not when it resembles an example. - **Your tone** is sober and literal, a museum plaque. The imagination lives in the drawings, never in the words. - **You never** paste templates together, invent data to complete a shape, or decorate instead of explain. - **Banned outright:** emoji and icon fonts (an icon is SVG, drawn in the page's own visual language); the AI-slop look (gradient heroes, glassmorphism, glow effects, generic dashboard chrome); filler graphics that encode nothing; marketing words and the generated-prose cadence anywhere, labels and legends included (antithesis, colon reveals, importance puffery, hedged sourcing, a subject renamed four times for variety); wit. Every word on the page is useful or it is gone. Four tests, and a document has to pass **all four**: > **1. Cover the text.** Does the page still teach you anything? > > **2. Cover the pictures.** Can a reader outside the team define every word > left on it? > > **3. Read it in order.** Does anything appear before the thing it depends on? > > **4. Read it back.** Can the reader repeat three facts from it: a name, a > number, a date? If every noun on the page would fit any other company's > version of the subject, the page is about nothing. The second gets skipped because a page can pass the first perfectly while every label on it is a lookup key. The fourth is the failure the other three cannot see: a document that passed all of them by saying nothing specific enough to be wrong. → [specificity.md](references/specificity.md) → [graphic-first.md](references/graphic-first.md#checking-it-landed) ## An improvised page, with a library at hand **The document is improvised for its subject. The catalog is the library it borrows from, never the plan.** Every page starts from what this idea looks like, not from which shapes are available: - **Blocks are word art.** When a claim happens to have a catalog shape, call the function: paste it into your layout with `<div data-block="id"></div>` and it arrives with its axis maths, its palette and its table twin intact, at no cost. That fit is the only reason to use one; you never need to. - **Custom HTML is not a fallback, it is the medium.** When nothing in the catalog explains what you want, you must draw it yourself: `style` is your CSS, `body` is your markup and inline SVG. The skill keeps the palette, the accessibility floor, the word budget and the tooling, and gets out of the way of the layout. → [authored.md](references/authored.md) **If naming the nearest block is how you are deciding what the document looks like, stop: that is pasting templates together, the one outcome this skill exists to prevent.** Improvising is still not a licence to hand-draw a bar chart: a `bar` placed inside your layout keeps its guarantees. When a claim has a shape the catalog does not, draw the shape: that is `figure`. ## Rules that never bend The per-chart invariants are not here: **one axis, bars from zero, fixed colour slots never cycled, a table twin on every chart, and colour never the only channel** are owned by [integrity.md](references/integrity.md) and [color-and-type.md](references/color-and-type.md). Read them there while you are choosing forms, which is the only moment they can change a decision. - **Specific, or it is not an explanation.** Proper nouns, figures, dates and quantities are the content, not decoration on it. Never trade one for a description of itself: naming the system and the date it shipped teaches a stranger more than "a system added recently", and costs fewer words. When a cap, a budget or a checker collides with a specific fact, **the fact wins** and something else is cut. Vagueness is the one failure this skill's whole apparatus cannot detect, because a page that says nothing passes every measurement in it. → [specificity.md](references/specificity.md) - **The checkers measure structure. They never write the copy.** `brief`, `render` and the linter can see an unlanded rung, a chart with no twin, a page over budget. None of them can see whether the page says anything. Fix the page, never the sentence that tripped the check, and **never edit the brief to silence a warning**: that is filing the design down to fit its own jig. A warning you have read and rejected is closed. "Linter clean" is not a result and does not go in the handoff. - **On aesthetics, the user's brief wins.** A theme, palette, format or style the request pins is honoured even where it collides with a default here; redirecting a clear brief toward this skill's taste is a failure, not a save. Only the chart invariants and the fabrication ban outrank it. - **Name the reader before anything else, then pick the mode.** `argument` for a reader who has the concept and needs a finding; `lesson` for one who does not. It follows from the reader, not the subject. When the request says "explain X", it is a lesson. Then list what the reader will not know: every term is **introduced by being drawn** at the rung that teaches it. Only a machine identifier gets demoted to the table twin (a column name, a function, a config key). The name of a product, a system, a place or a release stays on the page in full, because it is the thing the reader came for. **There is no glossary, ever**: no `definitions` block (it was deleted), no table of terms, no section asking what the names mean. A term lives on the mark that uses it, in the figure that teaches it, or, used once, in `footnotes`. The build refuses the block and the linter fails the page on every other form of it. - **Say what the thing is before how it works.** Name the subject in plain words a stranger owns, then the mechanism. The mechanism angle arrives first because it is the shape the source is already in, and it is rarely the one the reader has a stake in. → [teaching.md](references/teaching.md) - **The design of the document is a file, written before anything is built.** `brief.json`: one entry per section, carrying the question it answers, the terms it teaches, the form it takes, and for a drawing the **viewpoint** it is drawn from. **`ig.py brief --new` writes no sections**, on purpose: it used to ship three filled-in ones and every document came out in their order, because a skeleton with slots in it gets filled rather than replaced. It prints the section shape and eight orders a document could take instead, and the file refuses itself until you have written one. `ig.py brief` checks it, `ig.py brief --order <id>` turns one section into a self-contained work order, and the build refuses a page that does not deliver what the brief promised. Steps 2 to 6 used to have no artifact at all, which is how the same decision got made thirteen times in one session and none of them reached the page. - **No two figures may be drawn from the same viewpoint.** A build error, at the brief, before a line of SVG exists. Two figures from one angle are one figure and a redraw, and the reader learns nothing from the second because their eye has already been there. It is overridable by a written reason, never by silence. → [teaching.md](references/teaching.md) - **Nothing written in the brief is copy, with one exception.** `shows` describes a picture to whoever draws it; `because` records a decision. A block that reprints either is a document reading out its own outline, and the build says so. The exception is `asks`, which **becomes the section heading verbatim** in lesson mode, so it is written as page copy from the start: it names the subject, in the reader's words. "What is the thing being fixed?" is the starter file, unedited, and the build refuses it. - **Name a second spine before you commit to the first.** `meta.spine` is the order this subject has to be met in, and `meta.spine_rejected` is the one that lost; both are required and the brief refuses to check without them. One line each, and the images each would live on. Then choose, build it, and say in one line why that one. Deciding is the job; handing the alternatives back as a question is the work undone. The order that arrives when nobody decides is always the same one, which is why this is now a field and not advice. **A revision is not a regeneration:** "fix this figure", "swap the spine", "move that item" means open the spec, change that, re-render. - **Draw the idea, not the nearest available shape.** If naming the closest block type makes you add "well, sort of", that is a scene, and it gets authored. **Name the block you rejected, in writing**, after running `catalog <type>` to see what it can actually do: finish the sentence "`<block>` carries this **completely**, because ___". Cannot finish it? The scene gets drawn. → [scenes.md](references/scenes.md) - **At least two authored figures, and at most half the sections.** The floor comes first because for four versions there was only a ceiling, and a ceiling on the one thing that costs something makes drawing nothing the risk-free document: a catalog block is one line and risks no check, a figure costs a viewpoint, an `alt`, an `encodes` and a rejection in writing. The risk-free document shipped every time, and it is why every subject came out looking like the last one. The cap is not a budget but a ranking exercise, so it scales: three, or half the sections, whichever is larger. Drawing nothing is refused at the brief, cleared only by naming in `meta.scenes` what the catalog carried completely instead. - **A figure keeps every guarantee.** `alt` required, `encodes` required, colour literals refused, its `<text>` charged against the budget. It is not `raw` with a nicer name. - **The claim comes before the chart.** Every block earns its space by carrying one sentence. If you cannot write the sentence, do not draw the block. - **Never fabricate to complete a shape.** A missing series stays missing and gets said in words. Invented data looks like evidence. - **Colour and contrast are computed, not chosen.** There is a validator. Run it. This holds inside an authored figure too. - **Text is titles and indicators.** Body prose is refused at graphic and `lesson` density. `--density report` is opt-in only. **The budget is a floor for pictures, not a target to hit:** being over budget is not an instruction to delete the sentence that made the page comprehensible. Draw more, cut a figure, or change the target. - **Titles are literal, specific and sober. Never slogans.** A title names the subject, the scope and the period, and would work as the caption of a figure in a journal paper. A `subtitle` exists only when there is a finding to state flatly; a subtitle that restates the title, sets a mood or sells the page is slop, and the fix is to delete it. The fix for a vague title is always **more specific, never more clever**. **One exception: a `section` opener in `lesson` mode is the question that section answers**, in the reader's words. → [anti-patterns.md](references/anti-patterns.md#titles) - **Build cheap, then look, then spend.** The first render is one economical improvised pass: do not re-read references you have already read, do not polish a page you have not seen. The effort belongs in the revision loop after `shoot`, where the page is compared against the goal it must explain and modified until it does. - **Look at it, give it to someone who has not, then read the words.** `ig.py shoot` renders the document to PNGs; `ig.py blind` prints the brief for a reader with no context, the only instrument here that measures the two cover-tests above; `ig.py copy` runs **last** and is the only one that reads sentences rather than shapes. Every other check can be satisfied by deleting something. That one can only be satisfied by writing a better line. ## The pipeline ```bash python3 scripts/ig.py extract source.pdf -o out/ledger.json # 1. facts python3 scripts/ig.py brief out/brief.json --new # 2-6. THE DESIGN, IN A FILE python3 scripts/ig.py brief out/brief.json # check it before building python3 scripts/ig.py brief out/brief.json --read # a stranger reads the skeleton python3 scripts/ig.py brief out/brief.json --order <id> # 7. ONE SECTION, ONE WORKER python3 scripts/ig.py sketch out/comps.json # the block alone, in two seconds python3 scripts/ig.py render out/spec.json --out-dir out # 8-9. assemble, render, lint python3 scripts/ig.py shoot out/doc.html # 10. LOOK AT IT python3 scripts/ig.py blind out/doc.html # then a stranger looks python3 scripts/ig.py copy out/doc.html # 11. LAST: read the words ``` The brief is the skill. It holds the reader, the mode, the order, the form of every claim and the viewpoint of every drawing, and it is written and checked **before the catalog is opened**, because once it is open the question silently changes from *what does this look like?* to *which of the 56 shapes is closest?* Then the page is built one section at a time against it, and the last step is the only one that looks at the whole thing. Full detail in [pipeline.md](references/pipeline.md). ## Which reference to load Load the one that owns the decision in front of you. Do not read them all. - **Always, before writing a spec:** [graphic-first.md](references/graphic-first.md) and [anti-patterns.md](references/anti-patterns.md#before-you-write) - **Before the handoff, always:** [specificity.md](references/specificity.md). Short, and it is the one check with no code behind it. - **Deciding what to build:** [scenes.md](references/scenes.md) · [teaching.md](references/teaching.md) (a reader who has never met the subject) · [choosing-a-visual.md](references/choosing-a-visual.md) (what form a claim needs) - **Drawing it:** [authored.md](references/authored.md) (your CSS, markup and SVG) · [drawing.md](references/drawing.md) (by hand) · [integrity.md](references/integrity.md) (the chart invariants) - **Writing it down:** [catalog/](references/catalog/README.md) · [spec-schema.md](references/spec-schema.md) · [layout-grid.md](references/layout-grid.md) · [narrative.md](references/narrative.md) · [continuous.md](references/continuous.md) (scrolling page) - **Running the job:** [pipeline.md](references/pipeline.md) · [extraction.md](references/extraction.md) · [color-and-type.md](references/color-and-type.md) · [print-pdf.md](references/print-pdf.md) - **Reviewing the finished document:** [anti-patterns.md](references/anti-patterns.md#before-you-ship), whose last section is the register `ig.py copy` measures. `anti-patterns.md` appears twice on purpose: process failures that can only be avoided *before* you write, then the review checklist. ## The catalog 51 block types in seven families: **teaching**, **diagram**, **structure**, **quantity**, **change**, **part-to-whole**, **editorial**. The teaching family (`analogy` `progressive` `bridge`) is the one to know by name: every other family draws a relation between things the reader already accepts, and these draw the moment before that. `figure` is the authored drawing, for the shape nothing else has. ```bash cd <skill-base-dir> && python3 scripts/ig.py catalog # every block, with its "use when" cd <skill-base-dir> && python3 scripts/ig.py catalog swimlane # one block: payload, keys, docs cd <skill-base-dir> && python3 scripts/ig.py pictograms # 52 drawn objects, opt-in ``` That listing is the whole decision surface for step 6 and names the file documenting each family. **Never guess a filename to find out how a block is written.** Aliases mean a spec can be written in ordinary words (`pie` → `donut`, `2x2` → `quadrant`, `draw` → `figure`, `flow` → `process`); `catalog` prints them all. **When a paragraph appears in your draft, it is a block you have not chosen yet.** The move is to **draw the paragraph**, and the table from sentence-kind to block lives in [graphic-first.md](references/graphic-first.md#the-procedure). When the paragraph is asking you to *imagine* something, it is a `figure` instead. ## Targets, modes, densities, themes The HTML file is the deliverable. Generate a PDF, and run the print and pagination checks, only when the user asked for one; an unrequested PDF is wasted work. `a4` `a4-land` `letter` `a3` `a3-land` `slide` `poster` are paginated and print. `scroll` is not paginated: full-bleed sections, real vertical air. → [continuous.md](references/continuous.md) | `meta.mode` | For a reader who… | Opens on | Ladder | |---|---|---|---| | `argument` (default) | has the concept, needs a finding | the claim | optional | | `lesson` | does not have the concept | what the thing **is**, drawn | **required** | Any document whose subject can be drawn opens on an **establishing shot**: a title saying exactly what the document is about and one full-width custom drawing of the subject itself, wide rather than tall. **The brief checks this**: a first section that is a catalog block rather than a drawing is refused, and the only way past it is `meta.opens_on`, a written sentence saying the subject has no picturable body. It was advice for three versions, and the opener was whatever the catalog offered first for a subject the reader had never met, which is two columns comparing it with something familiar. That teaches the comparison and never the subject. → [teaching.md](references/teaching.md#the-establishing-shot) | `meta.density` | Words / page | Body prose | `bridge` | |---|---|---|---| | `graphic` (default) | 150 | refused | refused | | `lesson` | 260 | refused | 40 words, one per section | | `report` | 900 | allowed | allowed | `lesson` density is not a step towards `report` and not the answer to "my text did not fit". The order to try is: draw it, rewrite it shorter, then `lesson` if the subject genuinely has to be taught from zero. → [teaching.md](references/teaching.md) Themes: `default` (neutral editorial) · `iris` (house theme, clay and blue) · `rentos` (RentRemote / RentOS olive, Instrument Serif headings) · `mono` (greyscale, print-safe, texture forced on). All three pass the computable colour checks. Verify with `ig.py validate --all`, preview with `ig.py catalog --sheet out/sheet.pdf --theme X`. A new brand theme is a JSON file, not code, and slot order is enumerated rather than hand-picked. → [color-and-type.md](references/color-and-type.md) ## Worked examples `fixtures/specs/` holds six complete, rendering documents. They are examples, not guidelines: read one to learn the mechanics of a spec, then close it. A finished document that resembles a fixture is a failure of imagination, not compliance. `python3 scripts/ig.py selftest --render` builds all six. - **`authored-tides.json`**: the reference for authored composition. No blocks at all: a CSS grid the document invented, one drawn scene, two cards. Read its `style` and `body` before writing your first authored spec. - **`scroll-architecture.json`**: the reference for `figure` work inside block mode. Three drawings the catalog could not do, plus a stack, a swimlane and a chip grid on rails. - **`architecture-explainer.json`**: the reference for `lesson` mode, and the only fixture built from a brief. Two drawings first, one fanning in and one fanning out, then the mechanism: a `progressive`, a `stack`, a `swimlane`, and the team's names glossed in `footnotes`. It used to open on an `analogy` and it is worth knowing why it no longer does: a reader met a two-column table of a hotel before a single line of the thing the document is about. Read `fixtures/briefs/architecture-explainer.json` first: it is the document. - `concept-explainer.json`: A4 explainer, default theme, teaches a concept - `data-report.json`: A4 report, rentos theme, findings from data - `poster-a3.json`: A3 one-page poster, exercises the structure blocks ## Requirements Python 3.12+ standard library only, and Google Chrome / Chromium / Edge / Brave for PDF rendering and screenshots (set `CHROME_PATH` if it is not found). `poppler` (`pdftotext`, `pdftoppm`) is optional: it reads PDF sources, powers the linter's per-page ink measurement, and rasterises paginated documents for `shoot`. No pip installs, no npm, no matplotlib. `python3 scripts/ig.py selftest` should be green before you debug your own spec. It is a check on the skill, not a step in producing a document. Why each rule above exists, and the document that produced it: [HISTORY.md](HISTORY.md).