Claude Code Plugin 'nice-figures' Creates Research-Blog Style Matplotlib Plots
nice-figures is a Claude Code skill that eliminates the boilerplate of recreating Anthropic's signature research-blog plot style (bold sans-serif titles, smoothed trend lines with shaded bands, rounded-top bars, and ↓better badges). You describe the chart in natural language—Claude auto-styles it.
How It Works
Install once, then prompt like:
/plugin marketplace add Mapika/nice-figures
/plugin install nice-figures@nice-figuresAfter installation, just describe the plot:
"training-curve plot of these RL scores with a smoothed trend and shaded band, research-blog style"
"grouped bar chart comparing three models across four evals, with the rounded bar tops"You can supply your own CSV or arrays—the plugin maps them to the closest chart type. If you describe a figure without data, it generates a clearly-marked synthetic placeholder.
Under the Hood
The package consists of one skill + a small style helper (matplotlib + numpy only—no other dependencies) and 16 chart recipes including:
- Training curves
- Grouped bars (with rounded tops)
- ROC curves
- Heatmaps
- Scaling-law scatter plots
- Forest plots
- Pareto fronts
Output uses a white background by default for paper/conference-readiness, with an opt-in cream background for the blog aesthetic.
Source & License
MIT-licensed, repo with example images in the README at github.com/Mapika/nice-figures. The author is open to feedback and recipe requests.
📖 Read the full source: r/ClaudeAI
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