Visualization guidelines agents can inspect and cite.
chartcoach helps people and agents create and review charts using source-linked guidance. Its Guideline Catalog brings together recommendations, their reasoning, when they apply, and checks for putting them into practice.
Chat locally
With Node.js 24 or later:
npx chartcoach
With Bun 1.4.2+, use bunx --bun chartcoach. With Deno 2.9.6+, use
deno x -A chartcoach.
Connect a model in the browser to review a chart or discuss a design choice. Conversations and provider connections persist locally. See the chat guide for catalog selection, VPS hosting, and Docker Compose. The model connection guide covers independent text and embedding models, credentials, and endpoints.
Try a guideline
With uv, the Python package manager, installed:
uvx chartcoach catalog read directly-label-series-instead-of-using-a-color-key \
--format markdown
The command downloads and caches the public catalog, then prints the guideline and its sources. An excerpt:
Move labels onto the marks
Label colored series directly on the chart instead of making readers decode them through a color key.
Source: Lisa Charlotte Muth, What to consider when visualizing data for colorblind readers (2020).
The complete guideline includes its reasoning, exceptions, and checks.
Use chartcoach
- With an agent. Retrieve guidance for chart review, recommendations, and design discussions. Follow the agent guide or connect the MCP server, which exposes catalog tools through the Model Context Protocol. The chat app reviews uploaded charts with an Eve agent, on-device search, and source-linked answers.
- In an application. Read and cite entries through Python, TypeScript, or the CLI. Python also exposes native DuckDB connections for SQL and LanceDB tables for search.
- For your own catalog. Author guidelines and publish catalogs, with optional search indexes.
chartcoach is alpha software. Matching Python, catalog SDK, and chat builds from
validated main commits are available on the rolling preview release.
See rolling previews for installation,
provenance, retention, and recovery.