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Install figure-gate

Three routes put the checkers on your machine. They all get you the same code.

Choose a route:

  • Vendored if you want to read and edit the rules beside the figures they gate. This is the route the documentation teaches, because the thresholds are meant to be edited.
  • Installed if you want to pin a version.
  • conda-forge if your environment is managed by conda.

For the version each route needs, see Compatibility.

git clone https://github.com/narenp12/figure-gate
cp figure-gate/skill/assets/figure.mplstyle       your-project/diagrams/
cp figure-gate/skill/scripts/check_palette.py     your-project/diagrams/
cp figure-gate/skill/scripts/check_figure.py      your-project/diagrams/
cp figure-gate/skill/scripts/suggest_fixes.py     your-project/diagrams/  # optional

Copy check_palette.py even if you only want to check figures

check_figure.py imports it, and that import is what the series-color and colormap rows travel on. Without it, neither row raises: both report that nothing was checked, and both pass.

suggest_fixes.py is optional. check_figure.py imports it lazily, so a copy without it audits identically. You lose only report(fig, suggest=True) and suggest(rows).

uv add figure-gate                        # the library, and the two commands
uv tool install figure-gate               # the two commands only, no import

Installing puts the two checkers on your PATH as check-palette and check-figure.

py.typed ships with the package, so your type checker sees the annotations. It does not see them on the vendored route: those files are loose modules with no package for the marker to attach to, and PEP 561 reads every annotation in them as Any.

conda install -c conda-forge figure-gate

conda-forge follows PyPI through the feedstock's autotick bot, which opens the version bump some hours after a release. Until that merges, the conda package is the previous release. The badges on the repository show what each index is serving now.

To check what you got:

uv pip show figure-gate      # or: conda list figure-gate

Choose your import line

The import line depends on your route and, if you installed, on your version. Version 0.7.0 moved the modules into the figure_gate package. Through 0.6.0 the wheel put them at the top level of site-packages.

from figure_gate import check_figure as cf
from figure_gate import check_palette as cp
from figure_gate import suggest_fixes as sf

The same line a vendored copy uses:

import check_figure as cf
import check_palette as cp
import suggest_fixes as sf

import check_figure as cf
import check_palette as cp
import suggest_fixes as sf

Configure it for your document

Two settings take values only you know. Both are optional, and both change what the checks measure against.

  1. Set font.serif in figure.mplstyle to your document's body typeface.
  2. Set CONTENT_WIDTH_PT at the top of check_figure.py to the usable width of your page, in points.

Left as None, CONTENT_WIDTH_PT gives a scale of 1.0 and the page calculation does nothing. That is correct if you author every figure at the width it is placed at. To override it for one call, pass venue= instead. See Place a figure at a venue's width.

If your style sheet lives somewhere other than beside check_figure.py, set STYLE_SHEET at the top of that file to the path. Left as None, the checker looks beside the script, then in an assets/ directory next to it.

If you install the package rather than vendoring it, figure.mplstyle ships inside it, beside the module that reads it. That is where the style-sheet gate looks.

The style-sheet gate passes when it finds no sheet

Without a sheet to compare against, the gate reports a pass, including for the figure it exists to catch: one drawn with plt.style.use forgotten entirely.

Install it as a Claude Code skill

This repository is also a plugin marketplace, so Claude Code can install the skill and track updates against the tags the project already cuts:

/plugin marketplace add narenp12/figure-gate

Then run /plugin install figure-gate@figure-gate. The skill is invoked as figure-gate:research-figures.

To edit the thresholds in place, copy the skill instead:

cp -r figure-gate/skill ~/.claude/skills/research-figures

Claude then runs these checks when you ask for a figure for a paper or a deck.

Next steps