Scientific Figure Making

name: scientific-figure-making
description: >-
  Covers publication-ready matplotlib figures for academic papers, slides, and
  reports—bars, trends, scatter, heatmaps, and multi-panel layouts—with this
  repository’s house style, print/vector export conventions, and parity with
  figures4papers demos. Use when the user is finalizing or creating such figures
  in matplotlib. Do not use for interactive dashboards or web viz (Plotly, Altair,
  Bokeh), exploratory-only plots without a publication target, dominant 3D or
  geographic mapping, or Illustrator/Figma-first infographic workflows.

Scientific figure making

Open references/ only as needed; do not preload every file. Start from the table below, then follow links inside the document you opened (and into figure_* code via references/demos.md) instead of loading the full reference set up front.

When to load this skill

• Matplotlib figures for papers, slides, or reports that must match this repo’s publication look (fonts, palette, spines, legends, export).
• Requests involving grouped bars, trend lines, heatmaps, multi-panel grids, or PDF/SVG/high-DPI output in a scientific-figure context.
• References to figures4papers figure_* projects or “same style as the repo figures.”

When not to load

• Plotly, Altair, Bokeh, or other interactive / web-first plotting.
• EDA-only plots where seaborn or pandas is enough until there is a publication target.
• Primary workflow is 3D, GIS, or non-matplotlib tooling.
• Illustrator / Figma–first layout or infographic (not matplotlib data plots).

Related files

File	Open when
references/tutorials.md	End-to-end walkthroughs (bar, trends, heatmap)
references/api.md	Function signatures, PALETTE, validation rules
references/common-patterns.md	Layout patterns, legend panel, print-safe bars
references/design-theory.md	Typography, export policy, palette rationale
references/demos.md	Canonical figure_* demo links in figures4papers