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Skills/plotly
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plotly

Create interactive scientific and statistical charts with Plotly. Use when a user asks to build data visualizations, scatter plots, 3D charts, statistical graphs, or dashboards using Plotly.js or react-plotly.js.

#charts#interactive#python#javascript#dashboard
terminal-skillsv1.0.0
Works with:claude-codeopenai-codexgemini-clicursor
Source

Usage

$
✓ Installed plotly v1.0.0

Getting Started

  1. Install the skill using the command above
  2. Open your AI coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, or Cursor)
  3. Reference the skill in your prompt
  4. The AI will use the skill's capabilities automatically

Example Prompts

  • "Analyze the sales data in revenue.csv and identify trends"
  • "Create a visualization comparing Q1 vs Q2 performance metrics"

Documentation

Overview

You are an expert in Plotly, the interactive charting library for Python and JavaScript. You help developers create publication-quality interactive charts — scatter plots, heatmaps, 3D surfaces, geographic maps, financial charts, and statistical plots with hover tooltips, zoom, and export capabilities.

Instructions

Python (Plotly Express)

python
# Quick, high-level API for common chart types
import plotly.express as px
import pandas as pd

# Scatter plot with color and size encoding
df = px.data.gapminder().query("year == 2007")
fig = px.scatter(
    df, x="gdpPercap", y="lifeExp",
    size="pop", color="continent",
    hover_name="country",
    log_x=True,
    size_max=60,
    title="GDP vs Life Expectancy (2007)"
)
fig.show()

# Time series with multiple lines
df = px.data.stocks()
fig = px.line(df, x="date", y=["GOOG", "AAPL", "AMZN", "FB", "MSFT"],
              title="Stock Prices Over Time")
fig.update_layout(yaxis_title="Price ($)", legend_title="Company")
fig.show()

# Heatmap
fig = px.imshow(
    correlation_matrix,
    text_auto=".2f",
    color_continuous_scale="RdBu_r",
    title="Feature Correlation Matrix"
)
fig.show()

# Geographic choropleth
fig = px.choropleth(
    df, locations="iso_alpha", color="gdpPercap",
    hover_name="country",
    color_continuous_scale="Viridis",
    title="GDP Per Capita by Country"
)
fig.show()

# Subplots
from plotly.subplots import make_subplots
import plotly.graph_objects as go

fig = make_subplots(rows=2, cols=2,
    subplot_titles=("Revenue", "Users", "Churn", "NPS"))
fig.add_trace(go.Bar(x=months, y=revenue), row=1, col=1)
fig.add_trace(go.Scatter(x=months, y=users, mode="lines"), row=1, col=2)
fig.add_trace(go.Scatter(x=months, y=churn, fill="tozeroy"), row=2, col=1)
fig.add_trace(go.Indicator(mode="gauge+number", value=72, gauge={"axis": {"range": [0, 100]}}), row=2, col=2)
fig.update_layout(height=600, showlegend=False)
fig.show()

JavaScript (Plotly.js)

typescript
import Plotly from "plotly.js-dist-min";

// Create interactive chart in the browser
Plotly.newPlot("chart", [
  {
    x: dates,
    y: values,
    type: "scatter",
    mode: "lines+markers",
    name: "Revenue",
    line: { color: "#4f46e5", width: 2 },
    hovertemplate: "%{x}<br>$%{y:,.0f}<extra></extra>",
  },
], {
  title: "Monthly Revenue",
  xaxis: { title: "Date" },
  yaxis: { title: "Revenue ($)", tickformat: "$,.0f" },
  hovermode: "x unified",
});

// React wrapper
import Plot from "react-plotly.js";
<Plot
  data={[{ x: [1,2,3], y: [2,6,3], type: "scatter", mode: "lines+markers" }]}
  layout={{ width: 800, height: 400, title: "My Chart" }}
/>

Dash (Python Web Framework)

python
# Build interactive dashboards with Plotly + Dash
from dash import Dash, html, dcc, callback, Output, Input
import plotly.express as px

app = Dash(__name__)

app.layout = html.Div([
    html.H1("Sales Dashboard"),
    dcc.Dropdown(id="region-filter",
        options=[{"label": r, "value": r} for r in regions],
        value="All", multi=False),
    dcc.Graph(id="revenue-chart"),
    dcc.Graph(id="breakdown-chart"),
])

@callback(
    Output("revenue-chart", "figure"),
    Input("region-filter", "value")
)
def update_chart(region):
    filtered = df if region == "All" else df[df.region == region]
    return px.line(filtered, x="date", y="revenue", title=f"Revenue — {region}")

app.run(debug=True)

Installation

bash
pip install plotly pandas             # Python
pip install dash                       # Dash framework
npm install plotly.js-dist-min         # JavaScript (minimal bundle)
npm install react-plotly.js            # React wrapper

Examples

Example 1: User asks to set up plotly

User: "Help me set up plotly for my project"

The agent should:

  1. Check system requirements and prerequisites
  2. Install or configure plotly
  3. Set up initial project structure
  4. Verify the setup works correctly

Example 2: User asks to build a feature with plotly

User: "Create a dashboard using plotly"

The agent should:

  1. Scaffold the component or configuration
  2. Connect to the appropriate data source
  3. Implement the requested feature
  4. Test and validate the output

Guidelines

  1. Plotly Express for 80% of charts — Use px.scatter, px.line, px.bar for quick charts; drop to go.Figure only for complex customization
  2. Hover templates — Customize hover text with hovertemplate; %{x}, %{y}, %{text} are variables
  3. Dash for dashboards — Use Dash (not Streamlit) when you need Plotly-specific interactivity and callbacks
  4. Export to static — Use fig.write_image("chart.png") for reports; requires kaleido package
  5. Subplots for comparison — Use make_subplots for multi-chart dashboards; shared axes for alignment
  6. Minimal JS bundle — Use plotly.js-dist-min (800KB) instead of full plotly.js (3MB+) in web apps
  7. Color scales — Use perceptually uniform scales (Viridis, Plasma) for quantitative data; categorical palettes for groups
  8. 3D sparingly — 3D charts look impressive but are hard to read; use 2D unless the third dimension adds real insight

Information

Version
1.0.0
Author
terminal-skills
Category
Data & AI
License
Apache-2.0