imagine-best-practices

When to use

Use this skill whenever you are working on Imagine figures for scientific articles, especially when you need:

• publication-oriented sizing (mm + dpi)
• SVG-first figure components
• chart/diagram/multi-panel/math patterns
• deterministic scaffolding for new projects and figures
• reliable PNG/SVG export and renderer debugging

Scaffolding

When creating projects and figures, load ./rules/scaffold-cli.md and ./rules/scaffold-templates.md first.

How to use

Read individual rule files for focused implementation guidance:

• rules/project-structure.md - Project folder and module conventions for Imagine

• rules/manifest-and-variants.md - Figure manifest schema, variants, props, controls, sizing

• rules/components-svg-only.md - SVG-first component patterns for clean vector export

• rules/publication-quality.md - Paper-ready design checklist (size, typography, color, multi-panel)

• rules/rendering-and-export.md - Render pipeline and export workflows

• rules/troubleshooting.md - Common rendering and export failures

• rules/scaffold-cli.md - new_project.mjs and new_figure.mjs usage

• rules/scaffold-templates.md - Included templates and default kind mappings

• rules/chart-patterns.md - D3 scale/axis/grid/legend chart patterns

• rules/publication-chart-style.md - Chart typography, stroke, marker, and density standards

• rules/diagram-primitives.md - Box/Arrow/Label/Callout usage

• rules/layout-and-spacing.md - Diagram alignment and spacing heuristics

• rules/multi-panel-guidelines.md - Panel labels, shared legends, spacing

• rules/mathjax-and-rendering.md - MathJax behavior in render/export

• rules/latex-authoring-tips.md - LaTeX writing patterns for figure text

• rules/render-cli.md - Renderer CLI cookbook

• rules/debugging.md - Renderer debugging playbook