Chart Prompts

1,337 ways to dress a line or bar chart, 669 light and 668 dark. Open any chart to see it full size and copy a prompt that gives your own chart the same look.

Every chart uses illustrative data. The prompts work with any coding agent and any charting library; they describe colors, type, spacing and marks precisely enough to reproduce each look.

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DOS Spreadsheet bar chart, dark theme: An 80-column text-mode worksheet with block-character bars and a READY status line.

DOS Spreadsheet

DarkBar

An 80-column text-mode worksheet with block-character bars and a READY status line.

  • Text-mode blue#0000AA
  • Bright cyan#55FFFF
  • White#FFFFFF
  • Bright yellow#FFFF55
  • Gray#AAAAAA

Prompt for your coding agent

Paste it with your chart's code. It restyles your data to match this chart.

Restyle my chart in the "DOS Spreadsheet" style described below. Keep my data, chart type, title meaning and units; change only the presentation. Use the charting library this project already uses (plain SVG if there is none). If the library can't express a detail, draw it in a custom layer instead of dropping it. Measurements assume a 960 x 600 chart; scale them proportionally.

Mood: an 80-column text-mode spreadsheet on a 1980s office PC. The chart lives inside the worksheet: labels and values in cells, bars typed out of block characters, a menu bar above and a status line and command prompt below. Utilitarian, bright and exact.

Colors (use these exact values):
- Screen: #0000AA text-mode blue for the whole canvas.
- Column letters, row numbers, scale labels and the file name: #55FFFF bright cyan.
- Cell text: #FFFFFF. Secondary text (subtitle, dashed rules, source) and ordinary bars: #AAAAAA.
- Highlight: #FFFF55 bright yellow for the top performer's label and bar, and the command cursor.
- Reverse video: #000000 text on #AAAAAA for the menu bar, #000000 on #55FFFF for the cell pointer, the current column letter and row number, the READY indicator and the function key labels.

Typography (Google Fonts):
- VT323 30px for every character. Its advance is exactly 12px, so the screen is a strict 80 x 25 grid of 12 x 23px cells inside a 12px blue overscan border at top and bottom; baseline 18px below the cell top. One size and one weight only: hierarchy comes from position, color and reverse video.

Layout (grid):
- Row 0: reverse-video menu bar (Worksheet  Range  Copy  Move  File  Print  Graph  Data  Quit) with the file name at the right.
- Row 1: the current cell's contents, e.g. "B6: (,0) 71420".
- Row 2: column letters in cyan, centered over each column; the current column in reverse video.
- Rows 3 to 21: worksheet rows 1 to 19 with right-aligned cyan row numbers in cells 0 to 2.
- Columns: A 11 cells wide (labels), B 9 cells (values right-aligned, ending one cell short), C to J 7 cells each (the bar area).
- Sheet row 1: the title stating the finding, in white, spilling across columns. Row 2: subtitle in gray with organization, measure, period and unit. Row 4: headers, with scale labels ($0, $10k, ...) at the start of C to J. Rows 5 and 16: rules of repeated "-". Data from row 6, totals below the second rule, then "Source: ..." in gray.
- Row 22: status line with file name in cyan, a row count, "NUM" and a reverse-video READY block at the right. Row 23: "Command:" in cyan, the command in white, and a yellow block cursor. Row 24: function keys as a white number followed by a 7-cell reverse-video cyan label.

Axes and grid:
- No gridlines or axis lines: the scale labels in the header row and the character grid itself are the axis.

Marks:
- Bar chart: horizontal bars, one per sheet row, starting at column C. Length is value divided by the per-cell scale, rounded to half cells (full and half block characters, or 12px and 6px steps drawn as rects). Bars are 17px tall inside the 23px row (3px inset top and bottom). Ordinary bars #AAAAAA, the top performer #FFFF55 with its label in yellow and the cell pointer (cyan reverse video) on its value.
- Line chart: plot one character per column in the bar area: a "*" in white at each value row (rows act as the y scale, top row = highest band), the latest or peak point in yellow with the cell pointer on its value, and connect nothing: text mode has no diagonal lines.

Avoid: proportional fonts, font size changes, anti-aliased shapes, gradients, glows, rounded corners, colors outside the 16-color text palette above, and anything that does not snap to the 12 x 23 grid.

When you're done, render the chart and check that every glyph and bar edge lands on the 12px character grid, bar lengths match the scale labels, only the top performer is yellow, and headers do not run into each other.