pipeshub-ai Data visualization
matplotlib, seaborn, plotly, and kaleido are already installed in the sandbox — no install_packages call needed for any workflow below.
Choosing a chart type
Pick the chart type from the question being asked, not from habit — a bar chart is not the universal default:
| Question shape | Chart type |
|---|---|
| Comparing a metric across categories ("revenue by region") | Bar chart (horizontal if category labels are long) |
| Trend over time ("revenue by month") | Line chart |
| Distribution of a single variable ("how are order sizes distributed") | Histogram, or box plot for comparing distributions across groups |
| Relationship between two numeric variables ("does price correlate with rating") | Scatter plot |
| Composition of a whole ("market share by segment") | Stacked bar chart — prefer this over a pie chart once there are more than ~4-5 slices, since angle/area comparisons get hard to read past that; a pie chart is defensible for 2-4 slices where the "parts of a whole" framing is the entire point |
If the question doesn't clearly map to one of these, default to a bar or line chart (whichever fits the data shape) rather than reaching for something more exotic — a chart the user immediately understands beats a more "interesting" one they have to puzzle over.
Readability rules (apply to every chart)
- Always set a title and axis labels with units (
"Revenue ($K)", not just"Revenue") — a chart with unlabeled axes forces the viewer to guess what they're looking at. - Only add a legend when there's more than one series/category to distinguish. A legend on a single-series chart is clutter.
- Never leave x-axis labels rotated to the point of being hard to read. If category names are long, use a horizontal bar chart instead of rotating vertical bar labels 90 degrees.
- Use a colorblind-safe palette — matplotlib's
"viridis"/"cividis"colormaps or seaborn's"colorblind"palette, rather than a default red/green distinction as the only signal between two series. - Sort categorical bar charts by value (descending), not alphabetically, unless the categories have a natural order (months, ordinal ratings) — alphabetical order makes it harder to spot the biggest/smallest category at a glance.
Library choice
matplotlib/seaborn→ static PNG. The default choice for a chart that's going into a report, an email, or anywhere it just needs to be an image. Save viaplt.savefig("chart.png", dpi=150, bbox_inches="tight")— thebbox_inches="tight"avoids clipped axis labels, a common failure mode. Saved files surface to the user automatically as artifacts; you don't need to do anything extra to hand them over.plotly(+kaleidofor static export) → when the user wants interactivity (hover tooltips, zoom/pan) or explicitly asks for an HTML output. Export interactive output viafig.write_html("chart.html"); if a static image is needed instead,fig.write_image("chart.png")(useskaleidounder the hood).- Default to
matplotlib/seabornunless the user's request specifically implies interactivity or a web-embeddable artifact — it's the lighter-weight choice and covers the vast majority of "make me a chart" requests.
Before finishing
Look at what you actually plotted against what was asked — a common failure mode is generating a technically-valid chart of the wrong slice of data (e.g. totals instead of averages, or the wrong grouping column) because a data-analysis step upstream computed something adjacent to, but not exactly, what was requested. Re-read the user's question once more against the chart's title and axes before presenting it.