Plotting Assistant

Defaults

• Use matplotlib + seaborn unless the user requests something else
• Default to PDF/SVG export for papers (vector formats)
• Use

  plt.tight_layout()

  or

  constrained_layout=True

  to avoid clipping

Paper-Quality Checklist

• Readable font sizes — axis labels ~12pt, tick labels ~10pt, legend ~10pt. Scale up for posters/slides.
• Colorblind-safe palettes — prefer seaborn's

  colorblind

  ,

  deep

  , or manually chosen distinct colors. Avoid red/green as sole differentiator.
• Consistent styling — if multiple figures go in the same paper, use the same colors, fonts, and line styles across all of them
• Meaningful labels — no

  label_1

  , no default axis names. Every axis labeled with units where applicable.
• Legends that help — place legends where they don't occlude data. Use labels that match the paper's terminology.
• Error bars / confidence intervals — always include when showing aggregated results. State what they represent (std, SEM, 95% CI).
• No chartjunk — remove unnecessary gridlines, borders, and decoration. Less is more.

Common Plot Types

• Training curves: loss/accuracy vs step/epoch, with smoothing if noisy
• Bar charts: comparing methods/baselines, with error bars
• Scatter plots: correlation between metrics
• Heatmaps: confusion matrices, attention maps, hyperparameter sweeps
• Multi-panel figures: use

  plt.subplots()

  with shared axes where appropriate

Guidelines

• Read existing plotting code first — match the style if figures already exist in the project
• Save figures to a sensible path — e.g.

  figures/

  or

  plots/

• Use

  fig, ax

  API — not

  plt.plot()

  directly. This makes multi-panel and customization easier.

Scope