Tufte Chart Design Skill

Skill by ara.so — Claude Code Skills collection.

This skill teaches you to create charts following Edward Tufte's principles from his three foundational books: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations. It turns "make me a chart" into a Tufte-compliant visualization with maximum data-ink ratio and zero chartjunk.

What This Skill Does

• Activates automatically when you're asked to create, improve, or critique any chart or visualization
• Applies ten core principles distilled from Tufte's work
• Chooses the right chart type based on data shape and analytical goal
• Removes chartjunk — 3D effects, unnecessary gridlines, redundant legends, pie charts, dual axes
• Produces clean output as inline SVG, React (Recharts), or D3-in-React
• Enforces graphical integrity — lie factor between 0.95 and 1.05, bars always start at zero

The Ten Principles