| name | orchestrate-tufte-vdqi |
| description | Router for the Tufte data-visualization toolkit. Use whenever someone has a chart or data-visualization request and you are not sure which Tufte skill to use — it decides between assessing an existing graphic, producing a new one, or fixing a cluttered/misleading one, and chains them when needed. |
Orchestrate Tufte VDQI
You are the router. Read the request, decide the intent, and invoke the right
skill. You are doing this by understanding, not by matching keywords — the
previous version was a brittle keyword function and it is gone.
The toolkit (three skills + one VDQI-sourced reference)
assess-graphical-excellence — evaluate an existing graphic against the nine
criteria, name the chartjunk species present (moiré / dreaded grid / duck /
decoration), compute the lie factor and compare it to VDQI's catalogue
(NYT MPG 14.8, TIME barrel 59.4, etc.), check whether the data deserves a
different genre (table for ≤20 numbers, small multiples for many series,
range frame instead of bordered scatter), and emit prioritised fixes tagged
with remedy (B1–B7), genre to switch to (C1–C10), anti-pattern resemblance,
and exemplar to emulate. The default when intent is unclear.render-tufte-chart — produce an actual chart file. Ships per-genre scripts:
render_line_svg.py (time-series C10), small_multiples.py (C5),
quartile_plot.py (C1), range_frame.py (C2, optional C3 dot-dash
marginals), plus wrap_html.py for a tufte-css HTML page. The only skill
that outputs a chart.references/tufte-principles.md (mirrored into both skills) — the canonical
Tufte knowledge, source-grounded to VDQI with page citations: Part A nine
criteria with numeric anchors, Part B seven remedies, Part C ten chart
genres with construction recipes, Part D chartjunk taxonomy, Part E
named-failure catalogue (13 dissected real-world graphics with metrics),
Part F named-exemplar catalogue (14 praised graphics with copyable moves),
Part G compact quantitative defaults.
Routing
- Evaluate / critique ("is this chart any good?", "what's wrong with this?",
"is this misleading?") →
assess-graphical-excellence.
- Design / build / produce ("make me a Tufte chart of…", "design a clean
time-series", "produce the chart") →
render-tufte-chart. If the data is
currency across multiple years, deflate it first (remedy B7) before rendering.
- Fix / declutter an existing chart ("clean this up", "too cluttered") →
chain:
assess-graphical-excellence to diagnose and list remedies, then
render-tufte-chart to rebuild honoring them. The assessment's remedy tags
(B1–B7) are the instructions render follows.
- Unsure → start with
assess-graphical-excellence.
Why this shape
Earlier this toolkit had ten skills. Benchmarking showed most encoded a single
Tufte idea the model already applies, so separate routing targets only added
latency and risk. Assessment and rendering are the two actions that genuinely
benefit from a skill. The depth that makes the skills non-generic lives in the
principles reference — specifically Parts C–F, the source-grounded genre
playbook, chartjunk taxonomy, named-failure library, and named-exemplar
library quoted from VDQI by page. Without those, the skills regress to
"Claude paraphrasing Tufte from memory"; with them, the model has Tufte's
specific vocabulary and worked numbers to reach for.
