paperbanana

name	PaperBanana
description	Generate publication-quality academic diagrams and statistical plots from text via a multi-agent VLM pipeline with iterative refinement (OpenAI or Google Gemini / nano-banana-2). Use when creating methodology diagrams, architecture overviews, flow charts, NeurIPS/ICML-style figures, or data plots for research papers and technical reports, or upgrading rough diagrams-as-code into polished illustrations; integrates with the report-builder skill for LaTeX inclusion. NOT for interactive/web diagrams (use mermaid-diagrams), TikZ/Wardley maps (use report-builder/latex-documents), photo/raster editing (use imagemagick), simple charts from data (use matplotlib), or 3D (use blender).
upstream	https://github.com/llmsresearch/paperbanana
version	0.1.0
status	active
tags	["diagrams","academic","plots","vlm","gemini","research"]
depends_on	["report-builder","latex-documents"]

PaperBanana — Academic Diagram Generation

Generate publication-quality methodology diagrams, architecture overviews, and statistical plots from text descriptions using a multi-agent VLM pipeline with iterative refinement.

When to Use

• Creating methodology diagrams for research papers
• Generating architecture overview figures from text descriptions
• Building statistical plots from CSV data for publications
• Producing NeurIPS/ICML-style figures from plain-language descriptions
• Upgrading rough diagrams-as-code into polished academic illustrations
• Batch generating figures for a multi-figure paper or report

When Not To Use

• For interactive or web-based diagrams — use the mermaid-diagrams skill instead
• For Wardley maps or custom TikZ diagrams — use report-builder or latex-documents
• For photo editing or raster manipulation — use the imagemagick skill
• For simple bar/line charts from data — use Python matplotlib directly
• For 3D visualisations — use the blender skill

Prerequisites

# Check installation
paperbanana --help

# If not installed:
pip install "paperbanana[google]"  # For Gemini (free tier)
pip install "paperbanana[openai]"  # For OpenAI
pip install "paperbanana[google,openai]"  # Both

API Keys (at least one required):

• GOOGLE_API_KEY — Gemini (free tier available, recommended for cost)
• OPENAI_API_KEY — OpenAI gpt-image-1

Default image model is nano-banana-2 (gemini-3.1-flash-image-preview); nano-banana-pro (gemini-3-pro-image-preview) for maximum quality. See references/providers-and-config.md.

Quick Start

Generate a methodology diagram

# From a text file describing your method
paperbanana generate \
  --input method_description.txt \
  --caption "Overview of the proposed framework" \
  --optimize --auto

# From inline text
echo  | \
  paperbanana generate --input - --caption  --auto