figrecipe

name	figrecipe
description	[WHAT] Publication-ready matplotlib figures with mm-precision layouts, YAML recipes, declarative specs, multi-panel composition, whitespace cropping, style presets (SCITEX, MATPLOTLIB), and box-and-arrow diagrams. [WHEN] Use when the user asks to "make a figure", "plot this data", "save a figure", "lay out panels at exact mm sizes", "compose panels A/B/C", "crop whitespace", "reproduce a figure", "plot mean ± CI", "confusion matrix", "raster plot", "apply SCITEX style". [HOW] `import figrecipe` for the Python API; see leaf skills for entry points.
tags	["figrecipe"]
allowed-tools	mcp__scitex__plt_*
primary_interface	mixed
interfaces	{"python":3,"cli":1,"mcp":3,"skills":2,"hook":0,"http":0}

figrecipe

Interfaces: Python ⭐⭐⭐ · CLI ⭐ · MCP ⭐⭐⭐ · Skills ⭐⭐ · Hook — · HTTP —

Installation & import

pip install figrecipe installs the standalone:

import figrecipe

This package does not ship as a submodule of the scitex umbrella.

Sub-skills

Mandatory

• 01_installation — pip install + extras + verify
• 02_quick-start — subplots → save → reproduce
• 03_python-api — Public callables grouped by area
• 04_cli-reference — figrecipe console entry

Deep-dive

• 05_styles — Style presets, SCITEX/MATPLOTLIB, custom styles
• 06_bundle — ZIP bundle format (spec.json + data.csv + exports)
• 07_diagram — Box-and-arrow diagrams, Mermaid, Graphviz
• 15_quick-start — Legacy quick-start (preserved)
• 16_plot-types — All supported plot types with examples
• 17_composition — Multi-panel figure composition (grid and mm-based)
• 18_cropping — Figure cropping, whitespace removal
• 24_l-shaped-scale-bar — L-shaped time/amplitude scale bar for axis-off trace / EEG panels
• 26_tight-layout-and-page-filling — use the page tightly (tiled over grid, never stretch); fr.empty_cells / fr.layout_report as the deterministic foundation

Workflows

• 10_workflows — Common figure workflows
• 11_cli-reference + 13_cli-extras — Extended CLI notes
• 12_mcp-tools + 14_mcp-tool-catalog — MCP tool reference

Standards

• 20_return-fig — Convention: plotting functions must return fig
• 21_figure-prep-playbook — Eight-rule playbook for publication-bound figures (real data, NaN handling, common scale, representative-example criteria, config-as-SSoT, figrecipe dogfood, L-shaped scale bar on signal traces, six-stat annotation doctrine + heatmap colorbar)
• 22_nan-sentinel-on-read — Convert storage-layer sentinels (e.g. -32768) to np.nan at the figure layer; example: neurovista ECoG gap sentinel
• 23_no-synthetic-data-policy — figrecipe rendering-side guard for the ecosystem no-synthetic-data policy (canonical home in scitex-dev scientific)
• 24_l-shaped-scale-bar — L-shaped scale-bar convention for representative signal-trace panels (hide axes; lower-left time + amplitude bars sharing a corner); worked-example leaf for playbook rule 7
• 25_figure-prep-checklist — pre-render merge-gate checklist + anti-patterns companion to the playbook (21)
• 27_six-stat-annotation-doctrine — every stat annotation carries n/CI/method/p/effect/statistic (italic symbols, N-vs-n), and every 2D heatmap ships a labelled colorbar; worked-example leaf for playbook rule 8, checked by STX-FM017/STX-FM018
• 28_never-silently-discard — never drop a property the author explicitly set without warning; suppress reversibly (locations, never a formatter) and assert on the RENDERED output, because an object-level assertion is blind to this corruption (it shipped a blank-axis comodulogram to review)

At a glance

• MCP tools — see 12_mcp-tools.md
• CLI commands — see 11_cli-reference.md
• Env vars — see 30_env-vars.md