aref-vc

Tufte Claude Skill — Development skill for Claude Code

Development community

Claude Code skill that turns 'make me a chart' into a Tufte-compliant chart.

How to install Tufte Claude Skill

This entry records only its repository, not the path inside it, so there is no exact command to give. Open aref-vc/tufte-claude-skill and copy the folder into ~/.claude/skills/, or the file into ~/.claude/agents/.

What Tufte Claude Skill does

Claude Code skill that turns 'make me a chart' into a Tufte-compliant chart. Distilled from Edward Tufte's three foundational books.

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README

tufte-claude-skill

A Claude Code skill that turns "make me a chart" into a Tufte-compliant chart. Distilled from the three foundational books by Edward R. Tufte.


The Visual Display of Quantitative Information 1983 · 2nd ed. 2001 pictures of numbers	Envisioning Information 1990 pictures of nouns	Visual Explanations 1997 pictures of verbs

Install

Clone into your Claude Code skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/aref-vc/tufte-claude-skill.git ~/.claude/skills/tufte

That's it. Claude Code auto-loads the skill on next launch. To verify, run `/tufte` or ask Claude to "make a chart of anything."

To update later:

cd ~/.claude/skills/tufte && git pull

To uninstall:

rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/tufte

The three books, distilled

Tufte gives the three-book taxonomy himself on page 9 of *Visual Explanations*:

VDQI — how to depict data and enforce statistical honesty. The book that gave us data-ink ratio, chartjunk, lie factor, small multiples.
EI — how to lay out information in space. Layering, micro/macro readings, color rules, escaping flatland.
VE — how to show motion, causality, narrative. The smallest effective difference, parallelism, visual confections.

Together they yield the ten principles this skill applies.