Hive.chart Creation Foundations
Required reading whenever any chart_* tool is available.
Install
npx skills add aden-hive/hive --skill hive.chart-creation-foundations -g -a claude-code -y- Repository
- aden-hive/hive11.1k
- Category
- Design
- Updated
- 9d ago
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Context cost
- Mediumabout 2,319 tokens
- Runs scripts
- No, instructions only
What it does
Required reading whenever any chart_* tool is available. Teaches the one-tool embedding contract (call chart_render → live chart appears in chat AND a downloadable PNG lands in the queen session dir), the ECharts (data viz) vs Mermaid (structural diagrams) decision, the BI/financial-grade aesthetic baseline (no chartjunk, restrained palette, proper typography, single message per chart), and the canonical spec patterns for the 12 most-common chart types. Skipping this leads to 1990s-Excel charts, missing downloads, and the agent writing markdown image links by hand instead of letting chart_render drive the UI.
Chart creation foundations
These tools render BI/financial-analyst-grade charts and diagrams that show up live in the chat AND save as high-DPI PNGs in the user's queen session dir.
The embedding contract, one rule
To put a chart in chat, call
chart_render. The chat readsresult.specand renders the chart live in the message bubble. The download link isresult.file_url. Do not writeimage markdown by hand, the tool's result drives the UI.
That's it. One tool call, one chart in chat, one file on disk. No two-step "remember to also save it" pattern. The chat's chart-rendering UI is fed by the tool result envelope automatically.
When to chart at all
Chart when the data is visual at heart: trends over time, distributions, comparisons across categories, hierarchies, flows, geo. Skip the chart when:
- The point is one number → just say it. ("Revenue was $4.2M, up 12% YoY.")
- The point is a ranking of 5 things → use a markdown table with bold and emoji indicators.
- The data is so noisy a chart would mislead → describe the takeaway in prose.
A chart costs the user attention. It must repay that cost with a takeaway they couldn't get from prose.
ECharts vs Mermaid, the picking rule
Use ECharts (kind: "echarts") when... | Use Mermaid (kind: "mermaid") when... |
|---|---|
| You're plotting numbers over categories or time | You're showing structure, not data |
| Bar / line / area / scatter / candlestick / heatmap / treemap / sankey / parallel coordinates / calendar / gauge / pie / sunburst / geo map | Flowchart / sequence / gantt / ERD / state diagram / mindmap / class diagram / C4 architecture |
| The viewer's question is "how much / how many / what's the trend" | The viewer's question is "what calls what / what depends on what / what happens after what" |
If both fit (rare), prefer ECharts, its rasterized output is a proper data chart for slides; Mermaid's diagrams are for technical docs.
