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figkit

A small figure-making framework for research papers, built around one idea: a manuscript figure should regenerate, at its exact published size, from committed human-readable data — and every departure from the house style should carry its reason at the point where it happens.

FigKit is self-contained. Its public design rules live in specs/; the examples exercise the same manifest, geometry, plotting, and reproducibility contracts.

Requirements

There is no install step — clone and run. Every script reaches figkit through a small sys.path header at the top of the file (copy it from the template). The environment needs:

  • Python ≥ 3.11 — figkit reads figure.toml with the standard-library tomllib.
  • numpy, scipy, matplotlib — that is all; figkit has no other dependencies.

Verify a fresh setup end to end with the self-checking test figure:

python tests/demo_figure/make_figure.py

It builds a seven-panel figure, checks the statistics helpers against hand-computed values, measures the rendered axes against the inches its manifest declares, and confirms the framework refuses reason-less exceptions. Any failure exits non-zero.

Where to start

  1. Read examples/minimal_figure/ — the smallest complete figure (~40 lines): one panel, one committed table, a mean ± std band, and the three rules every figure follows.
  2. Read examples/project_theme.py and examples/themed_figure/ — one central project selection above an individual figure, showing palette choice and explicit canvas, layout, typography, plot, and panel-letter overrides.
  3. Read examples/lego_theme.py, examples/lego_figure_waves/ and examples/lego_figure_spectrum/ — a small worked project: one shared design layer solving one column grid, and two figures built from it, demonstrating every panel-shape "lego" (column and row level) and the checks that prove the two figures share one grid. See figkit/README.md's "Building blocks: legos" section for the full system.
  4. Run tests/demo_figure/ — the fullest worked example of the core mechanics. Its README maps each panel to the feature it demonstrates (subgrids, schematics, colorbars, geometric bands, run selection over per-run files).
  5. Copy figures/_template/ to figures/figure_<name>/ when starting a real figure. The template is the full shape: manifest, extractor, pure plotter, caption, panels.

The shape of a figure

figures/figure_<name>/
  figure.toml          # geometry + selection knobs; every departure from a
                       #   default needs a sibling <knob>_reason
  extract_data.py      # reduce your raw data ONCE into committed TSV tables
  extracted_data/      # one row per individual observation, never a summary
    extraction_log.txt #   what was selected, and any shortfall vs the declared runs
  make_figure.py       # pure plotter: reads only the tables, derives every
                       #   mean/band at plot time, saves at the exact declared size
  CAPTION.md           # hand-written caption; provenance is prose, not config
  panels/              # per-panel render modules and schematic art
  outputs/             # the PNG + PDF this figure's code wrote

Raw data stays outside the figures (the convention is a repo-root raw_data/, gitignored), so a fresh clone rebuilds every figure from the committed tables alone.

Design rules, in one paragraph

All figures share one physical width (figkit.style.FIGURE_WIDTH, 183 mm by default, appropriate for Nature and Science double-column figures); height derives from the declared layout. A project can supply an explicit theme through config.load(...) and style.apply_matplotlib_style(...), as shown in examples/themed_figure/. Geometry is authored in inches in figure.toml, never in plotting code, and never saved with bbox_inches="tight". Tables hold individual observations; statistics are derived at plot time so the reduction is visible in code. Any call that departs from the house layout — a grid override, a non-uniform subgrid, a shifted panel letter, a moved frame — must say why with a reason=, and the framework refuses the call otherwise. specs/CODE_SPECIFICATION.md holds the full house rules; specs/scientific_coding_principles.md the principles behind them; specs/PROJECT_DESIGN.md is the ownership rule for where a value belongs (figkit vs. a project's design layer vs. one figure's exception) and the panel-shape promotion path.

Designed and specified by the author; implemented with Claude, with critical review by Codex.