| name | paper-figure-contract |
| description | Use when planning, auditing, or generating publication-quality scientific figures, including panel-evidence maps, figure contracts, Nature-style figure logic, SVG export, editable text, semantic palettes, and caption checks. |
Paper Figure Contract
Use this skill before drawing or revising a manuscript figure. The goal is to make every figure a scientific evidence container, not decoration.
Inputs
- Manuscript claim or result to support.
- Source data paths or tables.
- Desired figure number and target venue.
- Existing figure draft if available.
Workflow
- Write the central scientific claim for the whole figure.
- Assign each panel one unique scientific question.
- Map each panel to source data and manuscript claim.
- Select chart type based on evidence, not aesthetics.
- Define statistics, sample size, error bars, and comparisons.
- Choose palette semantics and legend strategy.
- Specify export requirements: SVG primary, PNG preview, PDF/TIFF if venue needs it.
- Draft the caption with evidence boundaries.
- Run the redundancy and traceability audit.
Figure Gate
- No panel duplicates another panel's scientific question.
- Every panel has source data.
- Every visual claim appears in the manuscript or caption.
- Text remains editable in SVG.
- Numbers in caption are traceable.
- Palette meaning is consistent across panels.
- Palette choice is named and checked for accessibility and grayscale readability.
When To Read References
- For chart selection, read
references/chart-selection.md.
- For visual style, read
references/style-gate.md.
- For scientific color palettes, read
references/palette-system.md and ../../data/scientific_palettes.json.
