Teaching an AI Agent to Make Beautiful Charts
Most AI-generated charts look generic because nothing stops them from being generic. This series takes a different approach: an AI agent builds each visualization with a public chart workflow, then revises it until it passes the Tufte Test, a quality standard built on Edward Tufte's principles for clear, effective charts. The posts below track that progress, one chart at a time.
Beautiful Charts with AI
Make your own charts with the same workflow
Every chart in this series is built by the same public workflow. Fork it and run it yourself, then grade the result against the Tufte Test.
Latest
In AI-exposed jobs, only the youngest workers are losing ground
Since ChatGPT, employment for U.S. workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed jobs has fallen about 12%, while every older age group held steady or grew.
The Strait of Hormuz is Asia's oil lifeline, not the U.S.'s
The world's richest person has never been this far ahead of No. 2
The 2026 NBA Finals drew the biggest TV audience since 1998
GLP-1 use peaks in middle age, then drops at 65
U.S. abortions rose after Dobbs, driven by mailed pills
ICE detention hit a record, and most detainees have no conviction
Curaçao is the smallest nation ever at a World Cup
The rise in LGBTQ+ identification is mostly young women
Honey bees are dying at record rates, but the colony count holds steady
CO2 is piling up faster every decade, and 2026 just set a record
New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker
Gas prices feel like a record in 2026. Adjusted for inflation, they are not
The countries that work the most hours produce the least per hour
U.S. World War II veterans are fading from living memory
The Misery Index Stopped Predicting the National Mood
The 2026 Indy 500 was the closest finish in race history
NOAA's hurricane outlook misses one way: it underforecasts big seasons
Inflation worry flipped party lines while inflation itself barely moved
U.S. measles cases broke the post-elimination floor in 2025 and 2026
1 in 5 U.S. registered nurses are now 65 or older
U.S. federal workforce hits 60-year low after fastest peacetime cut
World Happiness Report 2026: what income can't explain
Mexico ships 83% of every fresh avocado the U.S. imports
No horse has broken Secretariat's 1973 Kentucky Derby record
U.S. women 40+ now have more babies per capita than teens
U.S. drug overdose deaths are down 35% from the 2022 peak
U.S. birth rate fell to a record low in 2025
Artemis II ended humanity's 54-year confinement to low Earth orbit
Sabastian Sawe ran the first sub-2-hour marathon: 118 years of marathon records
Every Atlantic hurricane track, 1980 to 2025
U.S. oil: from peak importer to net exporter in one decade
A thousand springs in Kyoto, in one chart
130 years of Boston Marathon winning times
Libraries were transforming. Then COVID hit.
The Claude Code leak in four charts: half a million lines, three accidents, forty tools
Every generation rediscovers art: 270 years of cultural interests in one chart
The rise and fall of bowling in the United States
The rise and fall of nuclear weapons testing
Housing and getting around eat half of the average American household's spending
96% of U.S. counties grew more diverse from 2010 to 2020
The engineering and tech gender gap has barely budged in 50 years
Americans eat 3x more cheese and half as much milk as they did in 1970
Where racial diversity lives in America, county by county
Americans used to outlive their peers. Now they die 4 years sooner.
Working your way through college now takes 5x more hours than in 1970
Coal collapsed and natural gas took over the U.S. power grid
