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Agent skill

Paper Figure Designer

by HKUSTDial in HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills

Advises on designing the three core figures of a technical paper, then audits them against rules for format, fonts, color and captions.

CC-BY-4.0Auto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Paper Figure Designer

skills CLI
$ npx skills add HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills --skill figure-designer -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills figure-designer --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/figure-designer .claude/skills/figure-designer && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
figure-designer
GitHub stars
8.7k
Token cost
~1.9k tokens
SKILL.md length
962 words
Files
6 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
12
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
CC-BY-4.0

At a glance

Advises on designing the three core figures of a technical paper, then audits them against rules for format, fonts, color and captions.

  • Works in 12 steps: Figure-type identification → Paradigm recommendation → Layout sketch → …
  • Planning Figure 1 of a paper before drawing it
  • SKILL.md covers Overview, When to use this skill, When NOT to use this skill and Core procedure, plus 2 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

The skill covers the Motivated Example (Figure 1), the Solution Overview in the methodology section and the Experimental Results figures, the three that carry most of a paper's story. From your intent and context such as research area, method name and target venue, it recommends a design paradigm, a layout sketch, labelling guidance and a tool, with detail held in reference files for each figure type, general design rules and tools.

It ends with a quality-control audit against a universal rule set: vector format, font size, colour-blind-safe encoding, self-contained captions and honest axis ranges. In audit mode, if you give an image path the agent loads the image to check font legibility, palette and signs of a raster file; without an image it works from your description and marks vision-only rules as items you must verify. It is not meant for generic plotting help outside a paper, and it points to other skills for drafting an introduction or reviewing a finished paper.

When your agent uses it

  • Planning Figure 1 of a paper before drawing it
  • Choosing a chart type for experiment results
  • Auditing a finished figure before camera-ready submission

Example prompts

  • “Design Figure 1 for my paper on query rewriting for retrieval, aimed at a database conference.”
  • “Which chart type should I use to compare my method against four baselines on three datasets?”
  • “Audit this figure for camera-ready quality: ./figs/overview.png.”

Workflow steps

12 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Figure-type identification
  2. Paradigm recommendation
  3. Layout sketch
  4. Labelling and annotation guidance
  5. Tool suggestion
  6. Universal rule audit
  7. Integrity gate
  8. Output
  9. Figure type
  10. Paradigm recommendation
  11. Layout sketch
  12. Labelling and annotations

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 207bc6f. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Paper Figure Designer loads about 1.9k tokens when it runs, and up to ~7.5k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 125 tokens; SKILL.md has 962 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~125
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.9k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~7.5k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills at commit 207bc6f, republished under its CC-BY-4.0 licence (© HKUSTDial). 962 words, ~1,864 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/figure-designer/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 5 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
figure-designer
description
Advises on the design of the three core figures in a technical paper: the Motivated Example (Figure 1), the Solution Overview (Methodology), and the Experimental Results figures. Recommends the right design paradigm, layout, labelling, and tool for each figure type, then runs a quality-control audit. Use when the user asks to 'design a figure', 'draw Figure 1', 'plot experiment results', 'choose the right chart type', 'which figure tool to use', or 'figure looks unprofessional'.
license
CC-BY-4.0

Figure Designer

Overview

A top-venue paper typically carries six to eight figures, with three carrying almost all the storytelling weight: the Motivated Example (Figure 1, on page 1 or the top of page 2), the Solution Overview (inside the Methodology section), and the Experimental Results figures (inside the Experiments section). Reviewers scan these three in under a minute to decide whether the paper is worth reading in detail; weak figures sink otherwise-strong papers.

This skill takes the user's intent (what they want to communicate) plus context (research area, method name, target venue) and returns the recommended paradigm, a layout sketch, labelling guidance, tool suggestion, and a quality-control audit against a universal rule set (vector format, font size, colour-blind-safe encoding, self-contained caption, honest axis ranges).

When to use this skill

  • Before drawing any figure in a paper.
  • The user asks to 'design a figure', 'draw Figure 1', 'plot experiment results', 'choose the right chart type'.
  • The user has drawn a figure and wants a design audit.
  • The user is unsure which figure type or paradigm to choose.
  • Preparing camera-ready figures before submission.

When NOT to use this skill

  • The user only wants generic plotting help (bar chart, line chart) outside a paper. Regular assistance suffices.
  • The paper is not yet structured; use intro-drafter or tech-paper-template first to decide what figures the paper needs.
  • The user wants a review of an already-finished paper. Use pre-submission-reviewer.

Core procedure

Step 1: Figure-type identification

Decide which of the three core types the figure is. If the user's request does not match any, either it is a supporting figure (use the experimental-results guidance as a base) or it does not belong in the paper.

If the mode is figure-audit and the user has provided an image path, load the image with the Read tool before proceeding to Step 2. Vision-based inspection enables the universal rule audit in Step 6 to check font legibility, colour palette, raster-vs- vector tells, and chartjunk directly rather than relying on user description. If no image is provided, continue in text-only mode and mark vision-only rules (font size, raster detection, colour palette) as "user must verify" in the final audit report.

Step 2: Paradigm recommendation

See: references/motivated-example.md, references/solution-overview.md, or references/experimental-results.md depending on figure type.

Each figure type has two to three canonical paradigms. Pick the one that fits the user's storytelling need, and explain why the other paradigms fit less well.

Step 3: Layout sketch

Produce a text description of the layout: panel positions, element placement, arrows, colour assignments. The goal is that the user could draw the first draft from the sketch alone.

Step 4: Labelling and annotation guidance
  • Name every visible element concretely (no "Module A", "X", "Y").
  • Annotate critical points (failure highlight, success highlight, comparison emphasis).
  • Specify font sizes and colour palette. Default colour palette: ColorBrewer Qualitative or Viridis for sequential.
Step 5: Tool suggestion

See: references/tools.md for the tool matrix and the decision heuristic.

Default recommendations:

  • Motivated Example and Solution Overview: PowerPoint (draft), Figma (polish).
  • Experimental Results: Matplotlib or Seaborn in a reusable plot_utils.py script.
  • LaTeX-integrated figures: TikZ or PGFPlots.
Step 6: Universal rule audit

See: references/design-rules.md for the full universal rule set.

Verify every proposed or existing figure against:

  • Vector format (PDF, EPS, SVG) for export.
  • Font size at least 8pt post-scaling.
  • Small canvas (not large canvas with small fonts).
  • Colour-blind-safe palette; no colour-only encoding.
  • Self-contained caption whose first sentence states the core finding.
  • Honest axis ranges.
  • No 3D effects, no chartjunk.

Flag every violation with severity.

Show full SKILL.md (382 more words)Show less
Step 7: Integrity gate

Run the checks in the Integrity gate section below.

Step 8: Output

Emit the full design in the Output format below.

Integrity gate

Bullets tagged [inspection] are checked by the LLM from its own output. Bullets tagged [user-verify] require the user to confirm because the check depends on either the drawn figure or knowledge the skill does not have (paper context, prior Introduction).

Before returning the design:

  1. [inspection] Paradigm matches figure type (motivated example is not a pipeline; overview is not a bar chart).
  2. [inspection] Layout sketch is concrete enough that the user could draw from it.
  3. [inspection] Labels are real entity names, not placeholders.
  4. [inspection] Tool suggestion matches the figure's complexity (not Matplotlib for a multi-icon motivated example, not PowerPoint for a 20-method bar chart).
  5. [inspection] when image provided, [user-verify] text-only Universal rule audit has been run; no CRITICAL violation is left unaddressed. Vision-only rules (raster-vs-vector, font size, colour palette) are only checkable when the user supplies an image.
  6. [user-verify] For motivated examples, the example is the same running example referenced by the Introduction (no new example introduced in Figure 1). The skill does not see the Introduction; the user confirms.
  7. [inspection] For experimental results, the chart type matches the data type (time-series uses line, multi-method comparison uses grouped bar, trade-off uses scatter).

If any [inspection] check fails, mark the design as "needs user attention". For [user-verify] items, surface them to the user as items they must confirm before submission.

Output format

1. Figure type
  • Type: <motivated-example or solution-overview or experimental-results>
  • Reason: <one sentence>
2. Paradigm recommendation
  • Paradigm: <name>
  • Why this paradigm: <rationale>
  • Alternatives considered and rejected: <list>
3. Layout sketch
  • Canvas: <size>
  • Panels: <list with positions and contents>
  • Arrows and connections: <list>
  • Colour assignment: <mapping>
4. Labelling and annotations
  • Element names: <list>
  • Critical highlights: <list>
  • Font sizes: <target>
  • Colour palette: <name>
5. Tool suggestion
  • Primary: <tool>
  • Alternative: <tool>
  • Reason: <rationale>
6. Universal rule audit
  • Vector format: <pass or fail>
  • Font size: <pass or fail>
  • Colour-blind safe: <pass or fail>
  • Self-contained caption: <pass or fail>
  • Honest axis range (if applicable): <pass or fail>
  • No chartjunk: <pass or fail>
7. Integrity gate result
  • Gate 1-7: <pass or fail>
8. Severity summary
  • <n> CRITICAL, <m> MAJOR, <k> MINOR
  • Top three actions first: ...

© HKUSTDial, CC-BY-4.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 5 other files (references) in skills/figure-designer of HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills.

  • SKILL.md
  • references/design-rules.md
  • references/experimental-results.md
  • references/motivated-example.md
  • references/solution-overview.md
  • references/tools.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 207bc6f

Compare with similar skills

Paper Figure Designer next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Paper Figure Designer compared with similar skills
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Nature Polishingaiskillstore/marketplace4301 repos~1.3kAutomated safety check: PassNone

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Categories

Questions about Paper Figure Designer

What does Paper Figure Designer do?

Advises on designing the three core figures of a technical paper, then audits them against rules for format, fonts, color and captions. The skill covers the Motivated Example (Figure 1), the Solution Overview in the methodology section and the Experimental Results figures, the three that carry most of a paper's story. From your intent and context such as research area, method name and target venue, it recommends a design paradigm, a layout sketch, labelling guidance and a tool, with detail held in reference files for each figure type, general design rules and tools.

When should I use Paper Figure Designer?

Paper Figure Designer fits situations like: planning Figure 1 of a paper before drawing it; choosing a chart type for experiment results; auditing a finished figure before camera-ready submission.

How do I install Paper Figure Designer in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills --skill figure-designer -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/figure-designer in HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills) into .claude/skills/figure-designer in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Paper Figure Designer in Codex?

Run `npx skills add HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills --skill figure-designer -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/figure-designer in HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills) into .agents/skills/figure-designer in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Paper Figure Designer in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills --skill figure-designer -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/figure-designer, .gemini/skills/figure-designer, .github/skills/figure-designer and .opencode/skills/figure-designer in your project.

What does Paper Figure Designer need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Paper Figure Designer is instructions for the agent only.

Does Paper Figure Designer access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Paper Figure Designer safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Paper Figure Designer use?

Paper Figure Designer is published under the CC-BY-4.0 licence (declared in SKILL.md). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Paper Figure Designer use?

About 1.9k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 7.5k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 5.6k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Paper Figure Designer?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Paper Figure Designer: Nature-Style Scientific Figures (Yuan1z0825/nature-skills, 47k stars), Paper Orchestra (Ar9av/PaperOrchestra, 677 stars), Ma Publication Quality (htlin222/meta-pipe, 139 stars) and General Figure Guide (jaechang-hits/SciAgent-Skills, 371 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Paper Figure Designer?

HKUSTDial (a GitHub organization) maintains it in HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills, which has 8,650 GitHub stars. The repository holds 12 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 5, 2026.

Source: HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.