npm package: @miclivs/pi-charts
Description: Pi extension for rendering charts — powered by charts-cli SDK
Author: michaelliv
Latest version: 0.1.5

# pi-charts

Chart rendering for [pi](https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono). Powered by [charts-cli](https://github.com/Michaelliv/charts-cli) SDK and [ECharts](https://echarts.apache.org/).

Ask pi to "chart this data" and get a rendered PNG, inline in the conversation and saved to disk. Bar, line, pie, scatter, radar, funnel, gauge, treemap, boxplot, heatmap, candlestick, sankey. All 12 ECharts series types, plus full component support.

![pi-charts demo](demo.gif)

## Install

```bash
pi install npm:@miclivs/pi-charts
```

## Usage

Just ask pi to visualize data. The extension adds two tools the LLM calls automatically:

- **"Plot monthly revenue as a bar chart"** → grouped bar chart with legend
- **"Show a pie chart of browser market share"** → pie with labeled segments
- **"Heatmap of commits by day and hour"** → color-scaled grid
- **"Radar chart comparing Alice and Bob's skills"** → overlaid radar polygons

The LLM fetches the schema first (`chart_schema`), builds a valid ECharts config, then renders it (`render_chart`).

## Tools

### `chart_schema`

Get the JSON schema for any chart type or component. The LLM uses this to build valid configs.

```
chart_schema({ type: "list" })     # list all available types
chart_schema({ type: "bar" })      # schema for bar series
chart_schema({ type: "xAxis" })    # schema for xAxis component
chart_schema({ type: "full" })     # complete EChartsOption schema
```

**Series:** bar, line, pie, scatter, radar, funnel, gauge, treemap, boxplot, heatmap, candlestick, sankey

**Components:** title, tooltip, grid, xAxis, yAxis, legend, dataZoom, visualMap, toolbox, dataset, radar-coord, polar, geo

### `render_chart`

Render an ECharts JSON configuration to PNG.

```
render_chart({
  option: '{"xAxis":{...},"series":[...]}',
  width: 1200,
  height: 600,
  theme: "dark",
  filename: "revenue"
})
```

The image renders inline in the conversation via a custom `renderResult` component. If `saveToDisk` is enabled (default), it's also written to `.charts/output/`.

## Settings

On first render, `.charts/settings.json` is created with defaults:

```json
{
  "saveToDisk": true,
  "width": 1200,
  "height": 600,
  "defaultTheme": "dark",
  "maxWidthCells": 90
}
```

| Setting | Default | Description |
|---------|---------|-------------|
| `saveToDisk` | `true` | Save rendered PNGs to `.charts/output/` |
| `width` | `1200` | Default image width in pixels |
| `height` | `600` | Default image height in pixels |
| `defaultTheme` | `"dark"` | Default ECharts theme (`dark`, `vintage`, or `null` for light) |
| `maxWidthCells` | `90` | Max terminal cell width for inline image display |

## How it works

1. LLM calls `chart_schema` to get the JSON schema for the chart type it needs
2. LLM builds a valid ECharts option object using the schema
3. LLM calls `render_chart` with the option JSON
4. Extension calls `charts-cli` SDK → ECharts server-side render → SVG → resvg → PNG
5. PNG is returned inline as a base64 image (rendered via pi-tui `Image` component)
6. PNG is also saved to `.charts/output/` if `saveToDisk` is enabled

No browser. No GUI. No network requests. Everything runs locally via ECharts SSR.

## License

MIT