skills/visual-storytelling-design/SKILL.md
Transforms data into compelling visual narratives by applying narrative structure, annotation techniques, scrollytelling patterns, and honest framing to data journalism, presentations, and infographics. Use when creating data-driven articles or reports, designing infographics with narrative, building scrollytelling experiences, annotating charts to guide interpretation, or when user mentions data storytelling, presentation design, annotated chart, narrative visualization.
npx skillsauth add lyndonkl/claude visual-storytelling-designInstall this skill globally with one command. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf.
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Core principle: Structuring data as narrative (Context → Problem → Evidence → Insight) aids comprehension and retention. Annotations guide attention, progressive disclosure reveals complexity gradually, and framing provides context for accurate interpretation.
Related skills: Use cognitive-design for cognitive principles, d3-visualization for D3.js implementation, design-evaluation-audit for systematic evaluation, cognitive-fallacies-guard for integrity checks.
Time: 1-2 hours
Copy this checklist and track your progress:
Story Design Progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Define Narrative
- [ ] Step 2: Choose Structure
- [ ] Step 3: Apply Cognitive Techniques
- [ ] Step 4: Review for Clarity & Integrity
Determine the story arc: What's the context? What's the question/problem? What data answers it? What's the insight? Choose an opening strategy: lead with human impact, surprising finding, or visual.
Resource: Narrative Techniques — Narrative Structure section
Select a template and pattern that fits your story type, audience, and medium. Options include step-by-step article, magazine style, annotated chart, interactive exploration, or presentation deck.
Resource: Storytelling Patterns — Templates and Decision Matrix
Add annotations (callouts, arrows, shaded regions, direct labels). Apply framing with baselines, comparisons, and denominator clarity. Use scrollytelling for progressive revelation if web-based. Consider visual metaphors.
Resource: Narrative Techniques — Annotations, Scrollytelling, Framing sections
Verify the story is honest (no cherry-picking, balanced framing), clear (insight obvious in 5 seconds), and complete (sources cited, limitations noted). Use design-evaluation-audit for systematic evaluation and cognitive-fallacies-guard for integrity verification.
Choose this when: Starting a data story and need to define the narrative arc and opening strategy.
→ Go to Narrative Techniques — Sections 1-2
Choose this when: Adding annotations to guide interpretation of existing charts and visualizations.
→ Go to Narrative Techniques — Section 3
Choose this when: Building web-based progressive revelation experiences.
→ Go to Narrative Techniques — Section 4
Choose this when: Providing context, baselines, comparisons, and visual metaphors.
→ Go to Narrative Techniques — Sections 5-6
Scope: This skill provides narrative structure, annotation techniques, scrollytelling patterns, framing guidance, story templates, and quality checklists for data storytelling. It does not implement code, evaluate general usability, teach cognitive theory, or check for misleading patterns.
development
--- name: zettel-note description: The note-writing discipline for this vault's evergreen knowledge graph, modeled on a Zettelkasten reading companion and governed by the vault conventions. Enforces declarative-claim titles, one claim per note (atomicity), own-words prose with no block quotes, the piped [[slug|Title]] link form, the labeled link-relationship vocabulary (Confirms/Contradicts/Extends/Context/Prerequisite/Builds-on/Applies/Example-of/Contrasts-with), 3-6 links per note, and search-
development
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testing
Reads and updates the FIFA World Cup Fantasy tournament state machine (footballfantasy/context/tournament-state.md) — the temporal backbone tracking phase (pre-tournament → group MD1-3 → R32 → R16 → QF → SF → final), budget ($100m group / $105m knockouts), nation cap (3 group, loosening in knockouts), chips remaining, surviving nations, each owned player's elimination-risk horizon, and deadlines. Validates state on load (count/feasibility checks), applies phase transitions, and appends to the append-only state log (never silent overwrite). Use to load state at the start of a run and to commit state changes after the manager makes a move.
development
Validates and persists FIFA World Cup Fantasy signal files to signals/YYYY-MM-DD-<type>.md. Checks the required frontmatter (type, round, date, emitted_by, confidence, source_urls), range-checks declared numeric signals, confirms every factual claim carries a source URL or "manager-provided", rejects unknown signal types, and refuses to persist a signal that fails validation (logging the failure instead). Keeps the inter-agent signal layer auditable so downstream agents can trust what they read and never re-derive it. Use whenever an agent or skill writes a signal.