| name | pastelplot |
| description | House plot styling — pastel matplotlib defaults + annotation helpers. Use when making publication-quality figures, when the user asks to "style my plots", "use house style", "use pastelplot/anthroplot", or when generating any matplotlib figure for reports, papers, or decks. |
pastelplot
Successor to anthroplot: same drop-in-module idea, pastel categorical palette, no internal-font (S3) dependency. The module lives at references/pastelplot.py in this skill.
Quick start
Copy references/pastelplot.py into the project (per anthroplot convention — it is a copy-in module, NOT a pip package), then:
import pastelplot
pastelplot.set_defaults()
Alternative (no module, no helpers): plt.style.use('/path/to/dotfiles/config/matplotlib/pastel.mplstyle') — or plt.style.use('pastel') if symlinked into ~/.config/matplotlib/stylelib/.
Palette
| Pastel (cycle order) | Hex | Accent (saturated brand) | Hex |
|---|
| PASTEL_CLAY | #E8A288 | ACCENT_CLAY | #D97757 |
| PASTEL_SKY | #9DBFE3 | ACCENT_SKY | #6A9BCC |
| PASTEL_OLIVE | #A9BC8F | ACCENT_OLIVE | #788C5D |
| PASTEL_FIG | #D99BB4 | ACCENT_FIG | #C46686 |
| PASTEL_VIOLET | #B3A5D3 | — | |
| PASTEL_SAND | #E3C692 | — | |
| PASTEL_AQUA | #93C7C1 | — | |
| PASTEL_GRAY | #B9B6AE | — | |
Text is SLATE (#141413); background white (IVORY #FAF9F5 available). Pastel hexes are softened derivations of the Anthropic secondaries, NOT official brand values — the ACCENT_* and SLATE/IVORY hexes are official. Highlight-one-series pattern: draw everything in pastels, the emphasized series in its matching accent (pastelplot.ACCENT_FOR[color]).
Helpers
pastelplot.annotate_values(ax, format=lambda x: f"{x:.0%}")
pastelplot.format_yaxis(ax, format=lambda x: f"{x:.0%}")
pastelplot.make_axes_transparent(ax)
Conventions
- Matplotlib (not Plotly) for paper figures — conferences require PDF with embedded fonts.
- Figures self-explanatory: title, axis labels, legend; embed in report.html rather than loose PNGs (see workflow-defaults § Visual Outputs).
- Fonts fall back sanely (Styrene B LC → Helvetica → DejaVu Sans); there is no S3 font install step.
- Legacy:
docs/anthroplot.md documents the old module (its .py reference file no longer exists); brand tertiary gradients (ORANGE/…/GRAY 100–900) are documented there if a sequential ramp is needed.
