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FigMirror: Ground It, Code It, Plot It

Xiaohan Zhao, Jiacheng Liu, Yaxin Luo, Zhiqiang Shen

Year: 2026Venue: arXiv preprintArea: cs.CVType: PreprintEmbeddings: 101

Intelligence

Status: succeeded | Model: Gemma-4-26B-A4B | Prompt: intel-v1 | Confidence: 92%

Last extracted: 9/1/2026, 4:53:26 AM

Summary

The paper introduces FigMirror, an agentic framework for reference-conditioned style transfer in scientific figures, which extracts visual styles from a reference plot and applies them to new data. It utilizes 'Grounded Measurement' to precisely measure style attributes via coordinate grounding and executable code, organized within a Drawer-Reviewer loop. The authors also present PlotTwin-Bench, a new benchmark for evaluating style transfer capabilities, demonstrating that FigMirror outperforms existing chart-to-code methods.

Entities (12)

FigMirror · framework · 98%PlotTwin-Bench · benchmark · 97%Grounded Measurement · method · 96%Drawer-Reviewer Loop · process · 95%GPT-5.5 · model · 92%ChartLlama · model · 90%METAL · model · 90%ChartGalaxy · model · 88%ChartIR · model · 88%Plot2Code · model · 88%Codex · software · 85%Matplotlib · software · 85%

Relation Signals (8)

PlotTwin-Bench → createdby → FigMirror

confidence 95% · As no benchmark is dedicated to figure style transfer, we buildPlotTwin-Bench.

FigMirror → implements → Drawer-Reviewer Loop

confidence 95% · Our proposed framework, FigMirror, organizes this work as a Drawer–Reviewer loop.

FigMirror → uses → Grounded Measurement

confidence 95% · We propose FigMirror, an agentic framework that unlocks these capabilities through Grounded Measurement

Grounded Measurement → utilizes → coordinate grounding

confidence 92% · Grounded Measurement, which locates visual elements by coordinates and measures their properties through executable code.

FigMirror → outperforms → Plot2Code

confidence 90% · Experiments show thatFigMirrorconsistently outperforms existing methods on reference-conditioned style transfer.

FigMirror → outperforms → ChartIR

confidence 90% · FigMirror has the best combined score on both, leading the strongest baseline, ChartIR, by 11.4 points on the hand-curated split

FigMirror → outperforms → METAL

confidence 90% · Experiments show thatFigMirrorconsistently outperforms existing methods on reference-conditioned style transfer.

GPT-5.5 → powers →

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Abstract

Abstract:Converting scientific figures into executable code has gained increasing attention, yet existing methods primarily focus on reproducing the reference figure itself. A more practical setting is to plot new data while preserving the visual style of a reference figure (e.g., color scheme and typography). Prior approaches mimic the reference through pixel-level optimization and struggle to carry its style to new data. We show that the key to this task lies in the coordinate grounding and coding capabilities present in modern computer-use models. We propose FigMirror, an agentic framework that unlocks these capabilities through Grounded Measurement, which locates visual elements by coordinates and measures their properties through executable code. We further introduce PlotTwin-Bench, an expert-curated benchmark with fine-grained code and image-level style metrics. Experiments show that FigMirror consistently outperforms existing methods on reference-conditioned style transfer. All plots in this paper are generated by FigMirror, except those produced by other methods for comparison. Our code and data are available at: this https URL.

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Preprint FIGMIRROR: GROUND IT, CODE IT, PLOT IT Xiaohan Zhao * Jiacheng Liu * Yaxin LuoZhiqiang Shen † VILA Lab, Department of Machine Learning, MBZUAI * Equal contribution. † Corresponding author: zhiqiang.shen@mbzuai.ac.ae ABSTRACT Converting scientific figures into executable code has gained increasing attention, yet existing methods primarily focus on reproducing the reference figure itself. A more practical setting is to plot new data while preserving the visual style of a reference figure (e.g., color scheme and typography). Prior approaches mimic the reference through pixel-level optimization and struggle to carry its style to new data. We show that the key to this task lies in the coordinate grounding and coding capabilities present in modern computer-use models. We propose FigMirror, an agentic framework that unlocks these capabilities through Grounded Measurement, which locates visual elements by coordinates and measures their properties through executable code. We further introducePlotTwin-Bench, an expert-curated benchmark with fine-grained code and image-level style metrics. Experiments show thatFigMirrorconsistently outperforms existing methods on reference-conditioned style transfer. All plots in this paper are generated by FigMirror, except those produced by other methods for comparison. Our code and data are available at: https://github.com/VILA-Lab/FigMirror. 1 ε 2468 -3 10× 3 ε 2 4 6 8 -3 10× SM b ε= b ε, SM 2 ε= 2 ε All W M 0,f FB , A f , A Pol τ , P lept eff θ 2 sin Z Γ SM prediction [95%] V κ 0.80.911.11.2 f κ 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 EW+Higgs EW Higgs HEP fit (a) Reference (de Blas et al., 2020, Fig. 1) 0.00.51.01.52.0 target metallicity log Z −4 −3 −2 −1 0 cloud-top pressure log P cloud A Local atmospheric constraints optical T near-IR T stellar corrected full joint 68/95% forward benchmark −1.0−0.8−0.6−0.4 mass-metallicity slope β M 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 between-system scatter τ sys B Population formation posterior nested 68/95% full joint T + MR T + MR + S C 26 parameters · 12-scenario precision track · posterior/oracle shadows base observations MR only optical T near-IR T stellar control optical + S near-IR + S broadband + S joint inference T + MR T + MR + S full joint survey depth N = 30 N = 100 N = 300 positive corr.negative corr.open marker: oracleposterior–oracle span log Z log P cloud C/O s haze A B ε R p / R J log g log P q T eq f cloud log a haze T int β M β F τ sys α pop f out β age β [Fe/H] log M break w sel f mix f spot Δ inst Δ T spot 20% 40% 60% 80% (b) Style transfer by FigMirror Figure 1: Reference-conditioned style transfer.FigMirrorpreserves the visual style of a reference scientific figure while adapting it to new target data. 1INTRODUCTION Producing a publication-quality scientific figure is laborious and challenging. The spacing, panel sizes, and fonts often require multiple rounds of manual adjustment before the figure looks right (Rougier et al., 2014). Researchers have traditionally used well-crafted figures from top venues as references 1 arXiv:2608.28814v1 [cs.CV] 28 Aug 2026 Preprint 1 2 3 1 2 3 Text LabelsFlat FillsSharp Boundaries 123 Graphical User InterfaceScientific Plot Structrual Similarities Figure 2: GUIs and scientific figures share localized, code-rendered elements with sharp boundaries, flat fills, and text. This structural similarity allows coordinate grounding learned for GUI elements to localize plot elements such as ticks, legends, and marks for measurement and review. and manually adopted their spacing, colors, and layouts. Multimodal models can now interpret such references and generate the corresponding plotting code. However, most existing chart-to-code methods focus on reproducing the reference figure itself at the pixel level, rather than transferring its visual style and layout to new data. Chart-to-code generation predates capable general-purpose large models, and early work fine-tuned specialized models for this task. Reproduction provides a natural training signal: the discrepancy between the rendered figure and the reference. ChartLlama (Han et al., 2023) is trained in this manner. General-purpose models have since made substantial progress in visual understanding and reasoning, yet the same recipe persists. METAL (Li et al., 2025a) adopts a multi-agent framework in which a generator writes the code and a critic repeatedly compares the rendered output against the reference and revises the code accordingly. This effectively moves the same optimization process to inference time. In either case, the objective remains reproduction. By contrast, transferring visual style of a reference figure to a researcher’s own data has received little attention as a task in its own right. A figure entangles its data with its style. We argue that transferring the style requires disentangling the two in two steps. The first is identification: locating the visual attributes that carry the transferable style, e.g., a color series or the spacing between subplots. The second, more critical, is measurement: computing each attribute’s exact value, e.g., a hex code or a width in points, from the element’s pixels. Modern general-purpose models have already learned the first step, just not from plotting. They are trained at scale for computer use (Anthropic, 2026; OpenAI, 2026; Bai et al., 2025; Wang et al., 2025). There, an agent operates software on behalf of a user, and every action begins with the coordinates of its on-screen target, a button or a menu entry. This demand instills coordinate grounding. A scientific plot, built from discrete, sharp-edged elements rendered by code (Figure 2), is as amenable to coordinate grounding, and as readily as a GUI. Yet existing plotting tasks do not explicitly invoke this skill or capability. When asked to match a reference figure, the model still tends to estimate visual attributes by eye. To address this, we propose Grounded Measurement to redirect the skill from acting to measuring. The model grounds the element that carries a style attribute, and where a click would follow, a short program reads the exact value, a line’s width or a series’ color. One measurement, however, resolves one attribute. A transfer needs every attribute found, measured, applied, and re-checked on the rendered figure. Our proposed framework, FigMirror, organizes this work as a Drawer–Reviewer loop. The Drawer decomposes the reference into style attributes, measures each, and renders the user data into a candidate. The Reviewer checks the candidate against the reference visually. The two iterate until the candidate matches the reference style. As no benchmark is dedicated to figure style transfer, we buildPlotTwin-Bench. Its references come from two sources: figures replotted by hand from top venues and journals, and existing plotting code that a pipeline enriches into more complex and visually appealing figures. We extract scoring criteria from each reference and score candidates through two channels. The code channel runs an exact 2 Preprint check on the attributes where the reference departs from a default plot. The vision channel catches problems that only appear once drawn, such as overlapping text or clipped labels. Our contributions are: • We formulate reference-conditioned style transfer for scientific figures and identify precise style measurement as its core challenge. •We propose Grounded Measurement, which repurposes coordinate grounding to read each style attribute from the reference with code, and realize it inFigMirror, an agentic Drawer– Reviewer framework. •We buildPlotTwin-Bench, the first benchmark designed for figure style transfer, with expert-curated figure–code pairs and per-reference scoring criteria that evaluate style from both code and rendered image. FigMirror consistently outperforms prior methods. 2RELATED WORK Chart-to-code generation produces plotting code from a chart image. The task grew out of chart understanding, which treated figures as question-answering and derendering targets (Kafle et al., 2018; Masry et al., 2022; Kantharaj et al., 2022; Liu et al., 2023), and turned generative once multimodal models could emit executable programs. ChartLlama (Han et al., 2023) LoRA-tunes (Hu et al., 2021) a multimodal LLaMA (Touvron et al., 2023) to redraw a chart from its image, and successors scale the recipe with larger corpora, code-oriented backbones, and reinforcement learning (Zhao et al., 2025; Tan et al., 2025). As general-purpose models matured, training gave way to inference-time self-refinement (Madaan et al., 2023; Shinn et al., 2023): a reviewer compares the render against the reference, and a drawer revises the code until the two agree (Li et al., 2025a; Xu et al., 2025). Benchmarks co-evolved with the methods, pairing a reference figure with its code and scoring how faithfully a candidate reproduces it (Yang et al., 2025; Wu et al., 2025a). Computer-use agents complete tasks by operating software through its interface, on the web (Deng et al., 2023; Zhou et al., 2024) and across full desktops (Xie et al., 2024). Acting on a screen requires knowing where its elements are, so the line invests heavily in GUI grounding: SeeClick (Cheng et al., 2024) pre-trains on grounding data, UGround (Gou et al., 2025) scales a universal grounding model on synthetic web pages, OS-ATLAS (Wu et al., 2025b) builds a grounding corpus across platforms, and agent models such as CogAgent (Hong et al., 2024) and UI-TARS (Qin et al., 2025) fold grounding into end-to-end action, the predicted coordinates feeding clicks, drags, and keystrokes. The direction is now mainstream: the latest frontier models ship computer use as a built-in capability and benchmark it on OSWorld alongside coding and reasoning (Anthropic, 2026; OpenAI, 2026). Neither line reaches our setting. Chart-to-code methods and their benchmarks target reproduction; plotting new data appears at most as an auxiliary test case (Yang et al., 2025). No method reads a reference’s style attribute by attribute, and no benchmark scores how faithfully a style carries to new data. Computer-use agents train the grounding that such reading needs, but apply it only to on-screen actions. Reference-conditioned style transfer has yet to be studied as a task in its own right. 3METHOD FigMirroris an agentic framework for this setting. A Style Checklist organizes which style attributes to inspect on a reference; Grounded Measurement then locates the visual element that carries each attribute and reads its exact value from the reference with code (Section 3.1). A Drawer–Reviewer loop organizes the generation (Section 3.2): the Drawer resolves every open attribute this way and renders the user data into a template, the Reviewer checks the template against the reference visually and routes attributes into a Revision and a Preserve List, and the lists update the checklist for the next round. The loop ends when the Revision List is empty; Figure 3 summarizes the process. 3.1GROUNDED MEASUREMENT A scientific figure shares its anatomy with a graphical interface (Figure 2): both are rendered from code into discrete elements with sharp boundaries and flat fills. On such pixels, general-purpose 3 Preprint Reference Plot User Data Drawer ✓ Ratio: 4/3 ✓ Font: 14 ----------- ? Bar Color Style Checklist Coord (x1, y1) (x2, y2) (1) Localize with Axis local = crop(img) rgb= mean(local) (2) Measure with code ✓ Bar Color #215F9A All ✓ Template Plot Reviewer ✓ Ratio ✓ Font ✓ Color Template Visual Check ? Width ?Overlap Skip Preserved ✓Ratio ✓Font Reference Update: t →t+1 Revision → ? Preserve -> ✓ No ? Grounded Measurement ? Bar Color ?+ Revision ListPreserve List Final Plot Figure 3: TheFigMirrorpipeline.✓= resolved, ? = open. The Drawer resolves each open style attribute with Grounded Measurement (locate the element, read its exact value with code) and renders the user data into a template; the Reviewer checks it visually against the reference, routing attributes to the Revision or Preserve List, until no revision remains and the template is final. models are trained to ground a referred element (Cheng et al., 2024; Gou et al., 2025; Xie et al., 2024): given an imageIand an elemente, such as a button or a menu entry, they return its image coordinates(x,y) = g(I,e). An axis tick or a legend entry grounds just as well, so we reuse this coordinate interface on the reference figure. Grounded Measurement builds on the reused interface. (1) Localize. For a style attributea, the model is queried for the coordinates that delimit the visual element carryinga, the two corners(x 1 ,y 1 ) and(x 2 ,y 2 )that span a regionr a of the reference. (2) Measure. A short programρ a computes the attribute value v a from that region, v a = ρ a I[r a ] ,(1) whereI[r a ]denotes the local crop used to measurea. The two steps appear as step (1) and (2) in the Drawer part of Figure 3. We then observe that the measurement programs are supplied just as readily. Code is the modality frontier models optimize hardest (Wang et al., 2024), and the few lines that read one attribute sit well within this capability. The lines differ by attribute, and the model fits them to what it sees: a mean over a flat fill recovers a bar’s color, a thin anti-aliased stroke asks instead for the modal pixel, a run test along a stroke tells dashed from solid. One primitive thus spans the attribute space, from continuous values such as colors, widths, and aspect ratios to discrete ones such as the presence of grid lines. SourceCandidate Before: -Title toosmall -Bins toocoarse After: -Title toosmall, See -Bins too coarse, See 1 3 Figure 4: Grounded Reviewer feedback. Plain text leaves the repair target ambiguous; a note tied to a marked region names it exactly, so the next Drawer revises the local mismatch and leaves matched attributes untouched. The same coordinate interface also supports review. After a draft is rendered, the model can mark the region where a style attribute was measured or ap- plied incorrectly. This turns a vague visual critique into a local repair target. 3.2THE DRAWER–REVIEWER LOOP A single measurement reads one attribute; a fig- ure has dozens. The Drawer therefore maintains a Style Checklist, composed of an open setOand a resolved setR. The checklist is initialized under prompt guidance, where the Drawer scans the refer- ence against a predefined attribute list and collects the attributes the figure exhibits, all open at the start. Each open attribute is then resolved by Grounded Measurement and moved toRwith its valuev a . OnceOis empty, the Drawer writes plotting code for the user data using the resolved style values and renders a draft figure. 4 Preprint The Reviewer gives this draft a fresh visual check. It receives a side-by-side view of the reference and the draft for global comparison, together with separate high-resolution views for local details. The side-by-side view exposes layout and balance errors. The high-resolution views expose small failures such as text overlap or misplaced guides. As illustrated in Figure 4, the Reviewer returns feedback items(b j ,n j ), whereb j is a marked region andn j is a short note. For example, a sentence such as “the label is too close” leaves the Drawer guessing which label and which mark are involved. A marked region tells the Drawer exactly what the critique refers to. The loop alternates a stateful Drawer and a stateless Reviewer. In each iteration, the Drawer edits the previous code using two lists from the last review. The Preserve List contains accepted style choices and grows monotonically across iterations. The Revision List contains localized mismatches and returns the corresponding attributes toO. The Reviewer re-audits the full draft in every round. This separation lets the Drawer preserve useful construction state while the Reviewer judges only the rendered result. The loop stops when a review produces an empty Revision List, and the current draft becomes the final figure. Implementation.FigMirroris packaged as a skill, a self-contained instruction bundle that an agentic coding harness loads at run time. The skill carries the full procedure (the Style Checklist, Grounded Measurement, and the Drawer–Reviewer loop); the harness supplies the model, code execution, and image access. This separation keeps FigMirror portable across harnesses. 4BENCHMARK AND EVALUATION 4.1BENCHMARK CONSTRUCTION Data sources. Existing chart-to-code benchmarks mostly focus on reproduction, so we build PlotTwin-Bench. It targets real-world use: a reference figure is worth mirroring when its visual design is worth reusing and its structure is easier to specify with an image than with a text prompt. We therefore select references that are visually appealing and structurally rich. We draw on two sources. The first is hand-curated. We select complex, visually appealing figures from papers in top venues, then replot each figure by hand to obtain an aligned figure–code pair. This source contains 50 figures. The second source scales this up. We start from existing plotting code from ChartMimic (Yang et al., 2025) and use an LLM-based rewriting pipeline to produce more complex and visually appealing references (details in Appendix B.2). A filter then removes the figures that fall short in either property, leaving 350. Together the two sources give 400 references across 12 chart types, including grouped bars, multi-panel line plots, and heatmaps. Examples of this enrichment appear in Appendix B.2. Figure 5a shows the five most common chart types in each source. Appendix B.1 reports the full composition. Style-transfer task. Each task pairs a reference figure with target data and asks the model to visualize the data in the reference’s style. To construct the target data, a generator sees only the reference image, invents a plausible scientific story in a different domain, and derives a dataset from that story. It then changes one to three aspects of the dataset while keeping it compatible with the reference’s chart and panel structure. The generator performs a final check for structural consistency and numerical plausibility; Appendix B.3 gives the full procedure. 139Bar 70Line 29 Polar/Radial 27 Box/Violin 25 Scatter 9Distribution 7 Std-band 5Line 5 Scatter 5 Box/Violin Augmented 350 · 87.5% Hand-curated 50 · 12.5% (a) 50607080 Metric score S 30 40 50 60 70 80 Human win rate (%) FigMirror ChartGalaxy ChartIR METAL Plot2Code ρ s =0.90 p exact =0.083 (b) Figure 5: Benchmark composition and evaluator alignment. (a) Five most common chart types in each source. (b) Automated score S versus human win rate across the five methods. 5 Preprint 4.2EVALUATION Direct VLM scoring tends to be lenient for scientific figure style transfer (Zheng et al., 2023). Most figures share standard axes, marks, and labels, so a holistic comparison can underweight the few choices that distinguish a reference and give visibly different candidates similar scores. Our evaluator focuses on these reference-specific choices through two complementary channels. The code channel identifies departures from an average plotting style, while the vision channel finds important mismatches in the rendered figure. The code channel scores the attributes that set a reference apart from an average figure. We use the Matplotlib (Hunter, 2007) defaults as a fixed and reproducible stand-in for this average. For a style attributea, letv a be its reference value,d a its default value, andˆv a its candidate value. PlotTwin- Bench pairs every reference with its code. The evaluator therefore reads v a from the reference code andˆv a from the candidate code, and both values are exact. During generation, the method sees only the rendered reference and measures from pixels (Section 3.1). The scored set is ∆(I) =a| v a ̸= d a .(2) For eacha∈ ∆(I), the candidate receives full credit whenˆv a matchesv a , zero credit when it is no closer tov a thand a , and proportional credit in between. We use exact agreement for categorical choices and normalized distance for continuous values. Ifq a ∈ [0, 1]denotes this credit, the code score is S code = 100 |∆(I)| X a∈∆(I) q a .(3) Code does not capture every distinctive choice. Layout, spacing, alignment, and visual hierarchy are often read more clearly from the rendered figure. The vision channel uses a VLM to identify important reference choices that the candidate failed to reproduce and records them as evidence-grounded visual defects. Each finding must cite visible evidence through bounding boxes in the reference and candidate images and, when applicable, the relevant code lines. The vision scoreS vision starts at100 and deducts5,10, or25points for each minor, major, or critical defect. The evidence requirement constrains unsupported findings and makes every deduction auditable. The two scores cover complementary evidence on the same scale. We combine them as S = 0.35S code + 0.65S vision .(4) The weights are fixed a priori: readers judge the rendered figure, so the vision channel receives the larger weight. We use the same weights in all experiments and report both channel scores alongside S. A human study suggestsSaligns with human judgment (Figure 5b); Appendix B.5 reports the protocol and statistics. 5EXPERIMENTS 5.1EXPERIMENTAL SETUP We evaluate on 150 of the 400 references: all 50 hand-curated figures and 100 sampled at random from the augmented source; the exact subset is included in the benchmark release. Every method returns a self-contained plotting script, scored with the evaluator of Section 4. Both the evaluator and every method’s underlying model are GPT-5.5 at x-high reasoning effort.FigMirrorruns as a skill in the Codex harness (Section 3). Appendix B.6 reports the rendering environment, harness configuration, and iteration budget; Appendix B.7 gives the prompt bundle. Baselines. We compareFigMirrorwith four external chart-to-code baselines: Plot2Code (Wu et al., 2025a), a one-shot chart-to-code method; METAL (Li et al., 2025a), an iterative feedback method for chart code generation; ChartGalaxy-Prompt (Li et al., 2025b) (hereafter ChartGalaxy), the prompt-based code-generation recipe released with the dataset of the same name; and ChartIR (Xu et al., 2025), a method that repairs generated code over successive rounds. We extract each reference’s scoring criteria once and share them across all methods. 6 Preprint A B Reference FigMirror (ours) Reference FigMirror (ours) Plot2Code METAL Plot2Code METAL ChartGalaxy ChartIR ChartGalaxy ChartIR Figure 6: Style transfer on two references. Each group placesFigMirrorbeside the reference, followed by four baselines. In A,FigMirrorreproduces the panel hierarchy and relative spacing of a dense composition. In B, it matches the joint hexbin layout, marginal histograms, threshold lines, color scale, and typography. 5.2MAIN RESULTS Table 1 reports the main style-transfer comparison onPlotTwin-Bench, with the hand-curated and augmented splits shown separately.FigMirrorhas the best combined score on both, leading the strongest baseline, ChartIR, by 11.4 points on the hand-curated split (72.7 versus 61.3) and by 6.1 on the augmented split (76.4 versus 70.3). It also leads in both channels on both splits, so the lead does not depend on the weights inS. Iteration alone does not order the baselines. ChartIR improves over the one-shot Plot2Code, while METAL, also iterative, stays at Plot2Code’s level. Its critic is built for reproduction, and once the data differ, whole-image comparison pulls the draft toward the reference’s data rather than its style. The two margins trace back to where each split’s styles come from. Augmented references are rewritten from existing plotting code, and a strong code model recovers much of their style unaided. The three leading methods all exceed 80 in the code channel, leaving the vision channel to separate them (9.2 points). Hand-curated references carry choices made by paper authors, which must be read from the image. On this splitFigMirrorleads in both channels, by 5.8 points in code and 13.3 in vision. These are the references the benchmark is built around, designs worth reusing that the model cannot guess. Figure 6 compares five methods on two references. Within each group, every method receives the same reference and target data. 7 Preprint Table 1: Main results on scientific figure style transfer. We report the code scoreS code , the vision scoreS vision , and the combined scoreSon the two reference sources ofPlotTwin-Bench: hand-curated figures and augmented figures. All methods use GPT-5.5. Hand-curatedAugmented MethodS code S vision S code S vision S FigMirror64.477.272.784.072.376.4 ChartIR (Xu et al., 2025)56.663.961.383.663.170.3 ChartGalaxy (Li et al., 2025b)58.658.458.580.758.166.0 Plot2Code (Wu et al., 2025a)53.456.855.664.943.050.7 METAL (Li et al., 2025a)53.750.551.666.243.551.5 Table 2: Ablations on style transfer. We implement each variant in the Codex harness by editing the corresponding skill prompts and removing the relevant tool access. The no-Reviewer variant retains the Drawer’s self-checks. VariantS code S vision S FigMirror64.477.272.7 w/o Reviewer62.774.970.6 w/o Grounded Measurement67.470.069.0 w/o FigMirror skill (naked Codex)60.461.461.0 5.3ABLATIONS Table 2 removes the two parts ofFigMirrorwe expect to matter most, then the skill as a whole. The first ablation removes the Reviewer and keeps the Drawer’s drafts and self-checks. The second removes Grounded Measurement from the feedback loop. The third, naked Codex, drops the skill and prompts the same harness directly. All three use the style-transfer setting. Each ablation lowers the combined score, and the loss grows with what is removed. Removing the Reviewer costs 2.1 points. Mismatches that get past the Drawer’s self-checks reach the final draft uncorrected, and both channels drop about two points. Removing Grounded Measurement costs 3.7. The Drawer estimates attribute values by eye, the Reviewer still boxes the resulting mismatches, but the corrections are also made by eye. The surviving drift costs 7.2 points in the vision channel, while the code channel edges up. Naked Codex costs 11.7. It drafts by eye alone and never measures the reference, so both channels fall and the score drops to the level of the external baselines. 5.4ITERATION BUDGET We test whether additional Drawer and Reviewer rounds improve style transfer under a fixed Codex configuration (Table 3). Table 3: Iteration budget in the Codex setting. All rows share the same model, data, and evaluation. Max iterationsS code S vision S 164.575.871.8 3 (default)64.477.272.7 567.078.374.3 The combined score rises with the budget, from 71.8 at one iteration to 72.7 at three and 74.3 at five. At three iterations, the vision score increases by 1.4 points while the code score remains essentially unchanged. Five iterations improve both channels. We use three in the main experiments to limit inference cost. 5.5MECHANISM-LEVEL CASE STUDY Figure 7(b) follows one transfer run through three iterations. Each review binds a mismatch to a box, and the next iteration edits inside the boxes while unboxed attributes, held in the Preserve List, carry over unchanged. The run makes the localization argument of Section 3.2 concrete. The first review marks the overlapping insets, and iteration 1 separates them: the box turns a composition-wide search into a local edit. 8 Preprint (a) Grounded Measurement fill and edge colorpanel boxes and guttergridline presence and direction im = Image.open("ref.png") a = np.asarray(im.convert("RGB"), int) px = a[60:430, 450:720].reshape(-1, 3) g = px[(px[:,1] > px[:,0] + 30) & (px[:,1] > px[:,2] + 30)] sat = g.max(1) - g.min(1) face = np.median(g[g.min(1) > 96], 0) edge = np.median(g[sat==sat.max()], 0) im = Image.open("ref.png") a = np.asarray(im.convert("RGB"), int) on = (a[400:600].min(2) < 230).mean(0) jmp = np.diff((on > 0.5).astype(int)) e = np.flatnonzero(jmp) + 1 r = e.reshape(-1, 2) r = r[r[:,1] - r[:,0] > 30] w = r[0,1] - r[0,0] gap = r[1,0] - r[0,1] im = Image.open("ref.png") a = np.asarray(im.convert("RGB"), int) c = a[55:655, 900:1030] d = np.abs(c - c.mean(2)[..., None]) m = c.mean(2) grey = ((d.max(2) < 12) & (m > 120) & (m < 245)) h = (grey.sum(1) > 80).sum() v = (grey.sum(0) > 80).sum() tone = np.median(c[grey], 0) face #7fbf7fedge #008000 panels [300,1146] [1314,2160] [2209,2255] gap/width 0.20 h_lines 35 v_lines 0 tone #e3e2e3 horizontal baselines only (b) Box-guided refinement 1 separate insets1 tighten crop2 restore U motif No open findings Figure 7: Grounded Measurement and box-guided refinement. (a) Three measurements from separate runs: each dashed box marks the probed region on a reference; below it, the probe code and its returned values. (b) One transfer run over three iterations; labels name the Drawer edit applied in the next column, and unboxed attributes stay in the Preserve List. Because the Reviewer is stateless, each round re-audits the full draft, and subtler mismatches surface once dominant ones are cleared. With the insets separated, the next review boxes the broad top margin and the compressed U-shaped motif; iteration 2 fixes both, and the final review returns no boxes. Every boxed defect is resolved in the following iteration, and no repair disturbs an attribute already accepted. Panel (a) shows the values that feed these repairs: each probe returns the exact value the Drawer commits to the checklist. 6CONCLUSION We study reference-conditioned style transfer for scientific figures. Because the target data differ from the reference, transferable style cannot be assessed through whole-image matching; its elements must instead be localized, measured, and reapplied. Our main insight is that scientific figures share the code-rendered structure of graphical interfaces: both are built from discrete elements with sharp boundaries and flat fills. The coordinate grounding that lets a model point to a button or a menu entry therefore transfers to plot elements such as ticks, legends, and marks. We turn this insight into Grounded Measurement, which locates each style element and reads its value with code, and we organize generation as a Drawer–Reviewer loop that makes every style attribute explicit, measurable, and revisable. To evaluate this setting, we buildPlotTwin-Bench, the first benchmark for scientific figure style transfer, and score each candidate from both the code and the rendered image against per-reference scoring criteria. We hope this formulation makes figure style a measurable and reusable design choice. 9 Preprint ETHICS STATEMENT A scientific figure carries an argument through data and the way that data is presented.FigMirror helps a user transfer a presentation style after the user has chosen a suitable reference; it does not decide whether that presentation fits the data. The user stays responsible for the substance of the figure, including the axis scales, labels, units, legends, and captions, and for checking that the visual encoding supports the underlying claim. Our benchmark is built from licensed sources. In constructing it, we select reference figures from sources with licenses that permit research use and retain their provenance during curation. When applyingFigMirroroutside the benchmark, users should respect the license and attribution terms of any reference figure and treat the generated figure as an auditable draft rather than publication-ready evidence. REFERENCES Anthropic. 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Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 37:52040–52094, 2024. Chengzhi Xu, Yuyang Wang, Lai Wei, Lichao Sun, and Weiran Huang. Improved iterative refinement for chart-to-code generation via structured instruction. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.14837, 2025. Cheng Yang, Chufan Shi, Yaxin Liu, Bo Shui, Junjie Wang, Mohan Jing, Linran Xu, Xinyu Zhu, Siheng Li, Yuxiang Zhang, et al. Chartmimic: Evaluating lmm’s cross-modal reasoning capability via chart-to-code generation. In International Conference on Learning Representations, volume 2025, p. 26590–26646, 2025. Xuanle Zhao, Xianzhen Luo, Qi Shi, Chi Chen, Shuo Wang, Zhiyuan Liu, and Maosong Sun. Chart- coder: Advancing multimodal large language model for chart-to-code generation. In Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), p. 7333–7348, 2025. Lianmin Zheng, Wei-Lin Chiang, Ying Sheng, Siyuan Zhuang, Zhanghao Wu, Yonghao Zhuang, Zi Lin, Zhuohan Li, Dacheng Li, Eric Xing, et al. Judging llm-as-a-judge with mt-bench and chatbot arena. Advances in neural information processing systems, 36:46595–46623, 2023. Shuyan Zhou, Frank F Xu, Hao Zhu, Xuhui Zhou, Robert Lo, Abishek Sridhar, Xianyi Cheng, Tianyue Ou, Yonatan Bisk, Daniel Fried, Uri Alon, and Graham Neubig. Webarena: A realistic web environment for building autonomous agents. In International Conference on Learning Representations, 2024. 12 Preprint ALIMITATIONS FigMirroris a model-side harness around a code-capable multimodal model, so its limits follow the underlying model. The Drawer must localize plot elements, read their style values, and write executable code, and the Reviewer must identify residual visual mismatches from rendered images. An error in either ability can pass through the loop. The harness earns its value when one-pass generation is unreliable. If a future model can directly infer the relevant plot elements, measure their style, and emit correct plotting code in one shot, the grounding mechanism and the Drawer–Reviewer loop become less necessary. BADDITIONAL IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS B.1BENCHMARK COMPOSITION Figure 8 reports the complete chart-type distribution for the augmented and hand-curated sources. Augmented 350 · 87.5% Hand-curated 50 · 12.5% Augmented 350 · 87.5% Hand-curated 50 · 12.5% Bar 1390 Line 705 Scatter 255 Distribution 109 Box/Violin 275 Heatmap 204 Field 2D 195 3D 54 Network/Tree 32 Polar/Radial 291 Std-band 37 Composite 03 Figure 8: Full chart-type distribution. Counts for all 12 chart types in the augmented and hand- curated sources. B.2REFERENCE ENRICHMENT PIPELINE We enlarge the reference pool from ChartMimic plotting code using an LLM-based rewriting pipeline. The pipeline rewrites each plotting script toward higher structural complexity and visual polish, and retains references that satisfy both criteria. Figure 9 shows five retained rewrites. B.3TRANSFER-DATA CONSTRUCTION Story-first generation. For each reference, the generator receives only the reference image. It reads the figure’s chart types, panel structure, major regions, and panel hierarchy, then invents a plausible scientific story in a different domain. From this story it defines the variables, conditions, measurements, repetitions, and uncertainty, and writes one CSV whose fields cover the visual roles in the reference. Variation and visual compatibility.The generator chooses one to three dimensions from Table 4 to vary the synthesized data. Because changing the scientific domain already changes labels and axis meanings,label_domain_swapandaxis_semantics_swapcannot serve as the main variation by themselves. At least one selected dimension must instead change the data schema, cardinality, density, scale, or the range and sign of its values. Throughout, the reference stays a viable visual template: 13 Preprint SeedAugmented (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) Figure 9: Reference enrichment examples. Each row places the seed figure on the left and its augmented reference on the right. The augmented versions add coordinated panels and retain the seed’s principal marks and encodings. 14 Preprint Table 4: Variation menu for story-first target-data construction. CategoryDimensionsExample changes Data shape (6)Series count; point density; category cardinality; matrix dimension; panel count; per-series density imbalance Add a panel; add a se- ries; increase category count Axis & scale (5) Scale type; x-axis type; axis-unit normalization; value-sign polarity; dual-scale requirement Linear→log; numeric →time; positive-only → mixed-sign Semantic & cate- gorical (5) Label-domainswap;label-lengthinflation; ordering-principle swap; hierarchy introduction; axis-semantics swap Short→long labels; flat→grouped; re- place the category do- main its main chart types, macro layout, reading order, and panel hierarchy are preserved. A regular grid changes its row or column count only when the new study calls for it and stays a complete grid such as2× 2or2× 4. A heterogeneous figure keeps its macro regions while at least one local block changes its panel allocation, grouping, or schema. We define each dimension below. Data shape (6).series_count: number of distinct series, lines, or groups.point_density: rows per series along the independent axis.category_cardinality: number of categories on a discrete axis.matrix_dimension: row×column count of a matrix or heatmap.panel_count: number of subplots in a multi-panel figure. per_series_density_imbalance: density ratio across series. Axis and scale (5).scale_type: linear, log, or symlog.x_axis_type: numeric, time, or categor- ical.axis_units_normalization: a unit or normalization change (e.g., seconds to milliseconds, raw counts to rates).value_sign_polarity: positive-only versus mixed values that cross zero. dual_scale_requirement: single versus dual y-axis. Semantic and categorical (5).label_domain_swap: replace a category set with a same- size set from a different domain.label_length_inflation: short labels to long labels. ordering_principle_swap: sort byxversus sort byy.hierarchy_introduction: flat versus grouped (super- and sub-category) structure.axis_semantics_swap: replace the axis meaning (e.g., cities× months to genes× conditions). Output and checks.The generator writes one CSV with descriptive column names and units, using panel or record identifiers when the file contains several visual roles. Before finishing, it checks the table for consistent row width, complete role coverage, finite values, and plausible numerical relationships. The pipeline then verifies that the output file is present and well formed. A missing or malformed CSV may be repaired once; no additional candidates are generated or ranked. B.4EVALUATION PROTOCOL DETAILS Scoring runs after generation. The evaluator reads the source code and image, the candidate code and image, and the render record. It does not call any method or rerender a figure, so a method never sees the scoring criteria while it draws. Each reference receives a code scoreS code and a vision score S vision , which stay separately auditable. Code channel. The Matplotlib defaults define a fixed stand-in for an average plot: a four-side box, outward ticks, no grid, the default color cycle, a boxed legend, and the default aspect, line width, and sans-serif type. For each style attributea, we read the default valued a , the reference valuev a , and the candidate valueˆv a from code. We retain the attribute only whenv a ̸= d a , giving the reference-specific set∆(I) =a| v a ̸= d a . The per-attribute creditq a measures how far the candidate moves from the default toward the reference:1when it reproduces the reference value, 0when it stays at the default or moves the wrong way, and a graded value in between. Categorical attributes (grid, removed spines, tick direction, serif, legend frame) use direct agreement; continuous attributes (palette, background, line width, aspect) use a relative distance, with colors compared by 15 Preprint CIEDE2000. The code score is S code = 100 |∆(I)| X a∈∆(I) q a . Vision channel. This channel judges the distinctive choices that code cannot see, such as layout, spacing, alignment, and visual hierarchy. A VLM compares the reference and candidate images and lists the choices the candidate failed to reproduce. Each listed miss must cite visible evidence: bounding boxes in the reference and candidate images, and, when the cause is traceable to the program, the relevant code lines. The evaluator rates each miss minor, major, or critical, with penalties of 5, 10, and 25. The score starts at 100 and subtracts the penalties, floored at 0, S vision = max 0, 100− X k p k ! , wherep k is the penalty of thek-th miss. The score is left unnormalized on purpose. A candidate that misses more choices drops further, which separates weak candidates from strong ones more sharply than an averaged similarity score. Combined score. The two channels are reported separately and combined asS = 0.35S code + 0.65S vision . The code channel scores the code-visible choices, and the vision channel records the rendered effects that code cannot settle. The two scores therefore measure complementary evidence. B.5HUMAN STUDY We validate the combined scoreSagainst human preference. Five annotators compared method outputs in pairs: each trial shows the reference figure and two candidates from different methods, and the annotator picks the candidate that better matches the reference’s style. The study covers 50 references and over 300 pairwise judgments; each comparison is labeled by two annotators, who agree on 76% of the trials. A method’s human win rate is the fraction of its comparisons it wins. Across the five methods,Sand human win rate have a Spearman rank correlation ofρ s = 0.90(exact two-sidedp = 0.083; Figure 5b). With five methods the sample is small; we take the correlation as suggestive, not conclusive. B.6EXPERIMENT SETUP DETAILS Generation and scoring are separate stages. A method sees only the reference image and target data. It returns a self-contained plotting script, which the runner renders in a common sandbox and scores only afterward, so no method reads the scoring criteria while it draws.FigMirrorruns on a pinned Codex backend with at most five refinement iterations. The no-skill ablation uses the same backend, but starts from a temporary Codex home whose skill directory is empty, which hides theFigMirror bundle, and it receives a one-sentence task prompt in place of the skill. Each reference’s scoring criteria are extracted once and reused across methods, so every candidate for a reference is scored against the same target. B.7PROMPT BUNDLE We include compact excerpts from the five prompts that define theFigMirrortransfer-generation algorithm: the launch template, the skill router, and the Orchestrator, Drawer, and Reviewer roles (Table 5). We keep the parts that carry the algorithmic contract (task framing, loop wiring, stop condition, and role responsibilities) and omit implementation detail such as pixel measurement snippets, style menus, worked examples, and agent-spawning syntax. Omitted spans are marked in the listings. Launch template excerpt You are running the FigMirror skill (skill dir: skill_dir). Workspace: workdir - inputs/reference_raw.png -- original reference figure (do not modify) 16 Preprint ComponentRole Launch templateFrames the transfer task, runtime inputs, and the final artifact con- tract Skill routerEntry point, required inputs, workflow, and non-negotiable con- straints Orchestrator Wires the Drawer–Reviewer loop, state handoff, and stop condition DrawerTurns reference style into grounded measurements and plotting code ReviewerAudits the rendered draft and returns preserve and revision signals Table 5: Core FigMirror transfer-generation prompts. Listings show excerpts. Launch template excerpt (continued) - inputs/reference_clean.png -- benchmark style anchor; identity copy of raw - inputs/data.txt -- TARGET DATA (CSV-like). If contents start with'# No data provided', run the data-gen sub-pass; otherwise this is the data that MUST be plotted. - data_echo.md -- runner-staged parse summary of inputs/data.txt. TASK: STYLE TRANSFER, NOT REPRODUCTION. The reference figure is the source of visual style ONLY -- color palette, fonts and font weights, line widths, markers, gridlines, spines, tick formatting, legend style, layout, aesthetic register. The reference's data values are irrelevant; do NOT plot them. Plot inputs/data.txt. TRANSFER PANEL CONTRACT. When inputs/data.txt contains a panel/facet/group column, that data column owns the output panel set. Render exactly those distinct data panels, using the reference's panel style, mark family, colorbar treatment, typography, spacing class, and motif vocabulary adapted to that panel count. If the reference has six panels and inputs/data.txt has four panels, draw a four-panel figure in the same visual family instead of adding synthetic or extrapolated panels. PRESERVE the reference's chart type and mark family -- bars stay bars, lines stay lines, scatter stays scatter, heatmap stays heatmap, dumbbell stays dumbbell. A different number of series, categories, or value magnitudes is NOT a reason to change the chart type. Only switch the chart type if the new data genuinely CANNOT be expressed in the reference's type at all; when in doubt, keep it. Abandoning the reference's chart family is a style-transfer FAILURE, not an adaptation. loop_policy User request: user_request [omitted for space] Benchmark reference preprocessing is already complete. Treat `inputs/reference_clean.png` as the exact L1 style anchor and DO NOT crop, trim, isolate, or discard panels from it. If the bundled FigMirror skill mentions Stage-0 reference preprocessing, interpret it as an already-completed no-op identity pass for this benchmark run. Follow the FigMirror SKILL.md loop wiring: iterate Drawer->Reviewer writing`figure_iterN.py`,`img_iterN.png`, `audit_iterN.json` at the workspace ROOT (the SKILL.md layout). The Reviewer must critique STYLE divergence from inputs/reference_clean.png only. It must NOT penalize the draft for plotting different numeric VALUES or axis RANGES than the reference, because the data intentionally differs. It MUST, however, still penalize a changed chart type, a dropped colorbar / shaded band / error bars / streamline field, a flattened or collapsed encoding, or any signature visual element present in the reference but missing from the draft. [omitted for space] Before exiting, finalize the selected iter into a canonical runtime bundle: `figure.py`,`figure.png`,`figure.pdf`,`output.png`, `floor_selfcheck_final.txt`,`selection.md`,`process.md`, and`status.json`. 17 Preprint Launch template excerpt (continued) `selection.md` must contain one line like`selected: iter <N>`. The final`figure.py` is the benchmark evaluation entrypoint. It must be self-contained except for`inputs/`, and it must NOT depend on its own filename being`figure.py` or`figure_iter<N>.py`; downstream evaluators may copy or wrap it before execution. Skill router excerpt --- name: figmirror description: > FigMirror mirrors the visual style of a top-conference paper figure (NeurIPS / ICML / ICLR / Nature family) onto the user's own data. Takes dirty data plus a reference figure screenshot (cropped or uncropped), preprocesses the reference crop, runs a Drawer/Reviewer loop, and outputs a camera-ready PDF plus a self-contained matplotlib script with an inline DATA SECTOR. --- # FigMirror (`figmirror`) Use this skill when the user wants to: - Transfer the visual style of a top-conference paper figure to their own data. - Produce a camera-ready matplotlib figure matching a reference screenshot in style, not in data. - Mirror 3D paper-figure references such as surfaces, scatter, trajectories, bars, layered waterfalls, or plane projections when the reference or data is actually 3D. - Receive a self-contained`.py` script with editable inline data plus PNG/PDF outputs. ## Required Inputs - A reference figure screenshot (`PNG`/`JPG`). It may include margins, captions, neighboring panels, or page text; Stage 0 preprocesses it. - The user's data in any parseable form: pasted table, CSV, TSV, markdown table, or dirty terminal text. - A working directory for iteration artifacts. [omitted for space] ## Architecture - **Python runner** owns UI lifecycle, cancellation, Stage-0 bootstrap, optional data-gen, and launching the main Codex process. - **The top-level Codex process is Orchestrator only.** It owns iteration state, role dispatch, artifact checks, Reviewer audit-view staging, JSON parsing, stop decisions, and final selection. - **Drawer** runs as the named`figmirror-drawer` custom subagent through `spawn_agent` with`fork_context=false`. It writes each iteration's matplotlib script, render, notes, and floor self-check in the staged workdir. - **Reviewer** runs as the named`figmirror-reviewer` custom subagent through `spawn_agent` with`fork_context=false`. It sees only the staged audit view: the far-view composite, full-resolution reference/draft near views, the Reviewer prompt, the aesthetic library, and bounded history. It returns strict JSON including`boxes`; the Orchestrator writes that JSON to `audit_iter<N>.json` and deterministically renders`annotated.png` plus `notes.md` for the next Drawer. - **3D flow** uses the standard Orchestrator plus named Drawer/Reviewer subagents, and optional candidate-scoring path for strict reproduction. ## Workflow 1. Read these bundled references from this skill directory: -`references/preprocessor.md` for Stage-0 reference crop cleanup. -`references/orchestrator-codex.md` for loop wiring and stop conditions. -`references/drawer.md` for the Drawer instructions. -`references/reviewer.md` for the Reviewer instructions. -`references/aesthetic-library.md` for the L2 convention library. -`references/three-d-prompting.md` only when the 3D insert gate is enabled. 2. Preserve the uploaded reference as`inputs/reference_raw.png`, then run the reference preprocessor to write`inputs/reference_clean.png`, `inputs/reference_crop_check.png`, and`inputs/reference_crop_report.md`. 3. Echo the parsed data structure before drawing. If the user explicitly asked you 18 Preprint Skill router excerpt (continued) to make up data or proceed without confirmation, record that in`data_echo.md` and continue; otherwise ask for confirmation. 4. When the 3D insert gate is enabled, stage`references/three-d-prompting.md` plus`references/three-d/` beside the normal prompts. The router selects exactly one mode file:`three-d/style-transfer.md` for ordinary user-data figures, or`three-d/strict-reproduction.md` for reproduction, comparison, or candidate/control replacement. For strict 3D reproduction runs that need quantitative candidate diagnosis, also stage`scripts/score_3d_candidates.py`; do not use that scorer for ordinary style transfer. The top-level Orchestrator owns final selection and must run the selected mode's rendered-image gates before copying any candidate to the final figure. Always stage`scripts/figannot.py`; it is the deterministic operator for building audit composites and drawing Reviewer boxes. 5. In Codex, the top-level agent follows`references/orchestrator-codex.md` and spawns`figmirror-drawer` for each iter. The Drawer writes `figure_iter<N>.py`,`img_iter<N>.png`,`notes_iter<N>.md`, and `floor_selfcheck_iter<N>.txt`; the Orchestrator verifies those files before any Reviewer handoff. 6. Stage`audit_view_<N>`, run`scripts/figannot.py compose` to create `composite.png` and`review_prompt.txt`, and spawn`figmirror-reviewer` as described in`references/orchestrator-codex.md`. The Reviewer sees the composite far view, full-resolution reference/draft near views, aesthetic library, optional 3D insert, bounded anchors/changed lists, and prior audit JSON, then returns strict JSON for the Orchestrator to persist. 7. Run`scripts/figannot.py draw` so`audit_view_<N>/annotated.png` and `audit_view_<N>/notes.md` become the next Drawer invocation's explicit stateless visual history. 8. Stop when the Reviewer returns a passing quality floor and a shipping verdict. If the caller supplied`max_iters`, select the best floor-passing close iteration when that limit is reached. If the caller enabled auto-until-shipped, keep iterating until`ship` or a real blocker. 9. Write final`figure.py`,`figure.png`,`figure.pdf`,`output.png`, `floor_selfcheck_final.txt`,`selection.md`,`process.md`, and`status.json`. `output.png` is the evaluator-facing PNG and may be identical to `figure.png`. [omitted for space] ## Non-Negotiables - The reference is a style anchor, not a layout-number anchor -- but the chart type and signature motifs ARE style, not layout numbers. Reproduce them. - Preserve the source's signature visual motifs -- chart type, colorbars, shaded/error bands, error bars, streamline fields, stacked/offset construction, insets. Dropping or flattening one is a fidelity failure, not a simplification. Only the data values and labels change to match`data.txt`. -`inputs/reference_raw.png` is the preserved upload;`inputs/reference_clean.png` is the Stage-0 crop used for L1 measurement. - Every visual choice must be grounded in L1 (reference image) or L2 (`references/aesthetic-library.md`); L3 opinion is disallowed. - Do not modify a property on the Reviewer preserve list outside its L1/L2 class. - Do not expose`data.txt` or source code to the Reviewer audit view. - Keep the final script self-contained and set`plt.rcParams["pdf.fonttype"] = 42`. Orchestrator excerpt # Codex Orchestrator Wiring This reference is the Codex-only loop harness for`figmirror`. It assumes the skill is installed and self-contained; do not read paths outside this skill package at runtime. Codex runtime shape: the top-level Codex process is Orchestrator only. It owns staging, iteration state, role prompts, render verification, Reviewer audit-view construction, JSON parsing, stop decisions, selection, and finalization. It delegates drawing to the named`figmirror-drawer` subagent and visual review to the named`figmirror-reviewer` subagent using`spawn_agent` with `fork_context = false`; generic`default` /`worker` /`explorer` roles are not valid substitutes. Candidate-pool generation is an optional host-level mode and is outside the default shipped loop. The Orchestrator must not create or edit per-iteration drawing artifacts (`figure_iter<N>.py`,`img_iter<N>.png`,`notes_iter<N>.md`, or `floor_selfcheck_iter<N>.txt`) itself. Those files are Drawer-owned protocol 19 Preprint Orchestrator excerpt (continued) outputs. After spawning Drawer, wait long enough for real production work before declaring the role unavailable: wait at least 20 minutes for iter 0 and at least 10 minutes for later iters. If the four Drawer outputs are still missing after that window, re-spawn the same`figmirror-drawer` role with a narrower repair task; do not draw inline. The Orchestrator must also not perform visual/style judgment itself, even as a "sanity look" at`img_iter<N>.png` or`composite.png`. Its checks are deterministic protocol checks only: required files, non-empty outputs, JSON parse,`figannot.py` compose/draw success, and final-bundle existence. All visual style judgment comes from the`figmirror-reviewer` final JSON. For strict 3D reproduction, the host may enable a bounded candidate-pool mode before final selection. This is a product mode, not a separate user-facing artifact: each candidate receives only the staged reference, L2 library, optional 3D insert, and its assigned output directory. Do not expose source data, prior candidate outputs, scores, or other candidates' notes across candidate prompts. ## Setup Resolve paths at the start of a run: ```bash WORKDIR=/absolute/path/to/run-directory SKILL_DIR=/absolute/path/to/figmirror REFERENCES=$SKILL_DIR/references USE_3D_INSERT=$USE_3D_INSERT:-0 USE_3D_CANDIDATE_SCORER=$USE_3D_CANDIDATE_SCORER:-0 PYTHON_CMD=$FIGMIRROR_PYTHON_CMD:-"uv run python" ``` Use`PYTHON_CMD` for every Python invocation in this workflow, including `tools/figannot.py` help/prepare/compose/draw, Drawer render checks, and final bundle execution. Bare`python` /`python3` commands are not valid in this repo. Do not run Python just to summarize`inputs/data.txt` when`data_echo.md` is already present; read the staged summary and inspect`inputs/data.txt` directly only for semantic details needed by the Drawer brief. Stage the local run copy of the bundled references: [omitted for space] ## Stage 0: Reference Preprocessing Before data generation, Drawer, or Reviewer, run the reference preprocessor as a separate bounded agent/process using`prompts/preprocessor.md`. It must read `inputs/reference_raw.png`, crop away removable whitespace/captions/page text or neighboring panels, compare the before/after crop, and write: -`inputs/reference_clean.png` -`inputs/reference_crop_check.png` -`inputs/reference_crop_report.md` If the crop would remove figure information, retry with a larger box. If no safe crop exists, preserve the raw image as`reference_clean.png` and record`no safe crop` in the report. ## Per-Iteration Loop Use the`max_iters` value provided by the caller/runner. If no value is provided, default to`max_iters = 6`. Iterate`N = 0..max_iters-1`. If the caller explicitly enables auto-until-shipped, ignore`max_iters` and continue until`fidelity.verdict` is`ship`, cancellation, or a real protocol/blocking failure: 1. Orchestrator spawns`agent_type = "figmirror-drawer"` with `fork_context = false`. The Drawer task names`$WORKDIR` and`N`, instructs the agent to read`prompts/drawer.md`,`prompts/aesthetic-library.md`, optional`prompts/three-d-prompting.md`, the single 3D mode file selected by that router, and only the matching`prompts/three-d/*.md` modules; optional `tools/score_3d_candidates.py` when quantitative 3D candidate diagnosis is enabled,`inputs/reference_clean.png`,`inputs/reference_crop_report.md` if present,`inputs/data.txt`, prior notes, prior audit, and prior annotated feedback (`audit_view_<N-1>/annotated.png` plus `audit_view_<N-1>/notes.md`) if`N > 0`. 2. Drawer writes`figure_iter<N>.py`,`img_iter<N>.png`,`notes_iter<N>.md`, 20 Preprint Orchestrator excerpt (continued) and`floor_selfcheck_iter<N>.txt` in`$WORKDIR`. It must not launch`codex`, `claude`, or another model process. The Drawer invocation is a bounded production pass: it may use short helper probes, but it must not stop at`_tmp_*` previews, measurements, or planning. Before it returns, the four iteration artifacts must exist at the workdir root. 3. Orchestrator verifies the four iter artifacts are non-empty before any Reviewer handoff. If anything is missing before the patience window has elapsed, keep waiting on the same Drawer. Use`wait_agent` timeouts of at least 20 minutes for iter 0 and 10 minutes for later iters. If outputs are still missing after that window, re-spawn the same Drawer role with a sharper repair task; do not draw inline as Orchestrator. 4. Orchestrator stages`audit_view_<N>`, builds`composite.png` with `tools/figannot.py compose`, and spawns`agent_type = "figmirror-reviewer"` with`fork_context = false`. The Reviewer sees only the audit view and returns strict JSON as its final message. 5. Orchestrator parses the Reviewer final JSON, writes it to [omitted for space] ## Drawer Execution Spawn the Drawer as a named subagent: ```text agent_type = "figmirror-drawer" fork_context = false ``` The Drawer prompt must be self-contained and name the working directory, iter index, staged prompt paths, input paths, prior audit path when present, and the four required output files. It must also name the local render command from `PYTHON_CMD`; the Drawer must use that command instead of guessing`python` or `python3`. Put`Role: figmirror-drawer` near the top of the prompt so the transport trace can be deterministically audited. State that the task is a bounded production pass: temporary probes are allowed only as local aids, and the Drawer must write`figure_iter<N>.py`, `img_iter<N>.png`,`notes_iter<N>.md`, and`floor_selfcheck_iter<N>.txt` before returning. [omitted for space] ## Reviewer Invocation ```bash ITER=<N> FIGANNOT="$WORKDIR/tools/figannot.py" mkdir -p "$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER" AV="$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER" cp "$WORKDIR/inputs/reference_clean.png" "$AV/reference_clean.png" cp "$WORKDIR/img_iter$ITER.png" "$AV/img_iter$ITER.png" cp "$WORKDIR/img_iter$ITER.png" "$AV/draft_fullres.png" cp "$REFERENCES/reviewer.md" "$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER/reviewer.md" cp "$REFERENCES/aesthetic-library.md" "$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER/aesthetic-library.md" if [ -f "$WORKDIR/prompts/three-d-prompting.md" ]; then cp "$WORKDIR/prompts/three-d-prompting.md" "$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER/three-d-prompting.md" if [ -d "$WORKDIR/prompts/three-d" ]; then mkdir -p "$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER/three-d" cp "$WORKDIR"/prompts/three-d/*.md "$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER/three-d/" fi if [ "$ITER" -gt 0 ] && [ -n "$ACCEPTED_ITER:-" ]; then cp "$WORKDIR/img_iter$ACCEPTED_ITER.png" "$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER/accepted_control.png" fi fi if [ "$ITER" -gt 0 ]; then cp "$WORKDIR/audit_iter$((ITER-1)).json" "$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER/audit_iter$((ITER-1)).json" if grep -q'^## Conflict ledger' "$WORKDIR/notes_iter$((ITER-1)).md" 2>/dev/null; then awk'BEGINcopy=0 /^## Conflict ledger/copy=1 copy && /^## / && $0 !~ /^## Conflict ledger/exit copy print' \ "$WORKDIR/notes_iter$((ITER-1)).md" > "$WORKDIR/audit_view_$ITER/conflict_ledger.md" fi fi [omitted for space] 21 Preprint Orchestrator excerpt (continued) ## Finalization Copy the selected iteration to final artifacts: ```bash cp "$WORKDIR/figure_iter$SELECTED.py" "$WORKDIR/figure.py" (cd "$WORKDIR" && bash -lc "$PYTHON_CMD figure.py") ``` Before the final run, ensure`figure.py` saves`figure.png`,`figure.pdf`, and `output.png`;`output.png` is the evaluator-facing PNG and may be an identical copy of`figure.png`. The final run must also write `floor_selfcheck_final.txt`. Write`selection.md` with the selected iteration and reason,`process.md` with a concise iteration changelog, and`status.json` with machine-readable finalization status. If any final-bundle file is missing after the run, repair`figure.py` or finalization and rerun it before exiting. Drawer excerpt # Drawer (`figure-illustrator`) System Prompt <figure_illustrator> You are an expert paper-figure illustrator skilled at producing matplotlib output that camera-ready reviewers cannot distinguish from a hand-tuned figure by a senior author of a top-tier ML paper. Your craft is geometric reservation, palette fidelity, typographic restraint, refusal to ship before the layout invariants verify, AND refusal to drift on properties you have already measured correctly. You can produce work of extraordinary quality -- when you slow down enough to verify the floor before declaring done, and when you trust your own measurements over a reviewer's eyeballed perception. You write Python (matplotlib) that, when run, produces a PNG plotting OUR data in the visual STYLE of a reference figure from a top-tier ML paper. You are not duplicating the reference; you are imitating its style with our numbers. Avoid two blocking failure modes: **Failure mode 1 -- overlap defects.** Style polish is what you do *after* the quality floor holds: 1. A per-point data label overlaps an axis tick label, e.g. a small value label sits directly on top of its tick text. 2. A right-edge data label bleeds into a neighboring panel title or subplot label. 3. A bottom-row xlabel, tick label, or axis label clips off the canvas. 4. A plotted layer crosses through readable text: contour lines/fills, heatmap cells, scatter/line marks, gridlines, or images obscure an in-panel badge, annotation, colorbar label, legend text, tick label, or title. **Failure mode 2 -- monotonic drift on measured properties.** Observed failure: a draft measured the reference aspect ratio at 1.95 in iter 0, then later reviews pushed it to 1.55 (21% off) without evidence. The same drift can flip a correctly measured left+bottom spine treatment into all four spines after an eyeballed reviewer claim. If a property was measured correctly, do not abandon it because a later no-tools review eyeballs it differently. Re-check L1 and the library, then either preserve the anchor or document the correction. Any overlap defect makes the figure unshippable. Anchor drift makes the loop diverge. Defeat both. ## Inputs you will be handed - A reference image (PNG/JPG screenshot of a paper figure). - An`inputs/reference_raw.png` preserving the original upload. - An`inputs/reference_clean.png` produced by Stage-0 preprocessing. Treat this as the L1 style anchor; it should be cropped to the target figure, with captions/page text/margins/neighboring panels removed when safe. - An optional`inputs/reference_crop_report.md` describing the crop decision. - A`data.txt` (terminal-pasted, may have`|` separators, may have header noise). - Optional`three-d-prompting.md` when the reference or data requires a 3D encoding. Read it as a router after`aesthetic-library.md`, then read exactly one mode file from`three-d/`:`style-transfer.md` for ordinary user-data figures or`strict-reproduction.md` for reproduction/candidate-control work. Ignore it for ordinary 2D figures. 22 Preprint Drawer excerpt (continued) - Optional`tools/score_3d_candidates.py` when the Orchestrator explicitly enables quantitative candidate diagnosis for a gated 3D strict reproduction run. Use it only to inspect already-rendered view/framing candidates against `inputs/reference_clean.png`; it is not a substitute for L1/L2 judgment and must not inspect data values. [omitted for space] ## What you produce, per iteration -`figure_iter<N>.py` -- the script. Self-contained. Inline data in a clearly delimited data sector.`matplotlib.rcParams['pdf.fonttype'] = 42`. No caption. -`img_iter<N>.png` -- what that script renders. - A short`notes_iter<N>.md` (<= 25 lines) listing what you changed since the previous iter and why. -`floor_selfcheck_iter<N>.txt` -- deterministic local floor checks and pass/fail. ## Layout invariants (the quality floor -- the Reviewer will check these) NEVER let an annotation text bbox intersect a tick-label text bbox. INSTEAD: after the first render, call `fig.canvas.draw()` and then for every annotation and every tick label, read`text.get_window_extent(renderer)` and assert pairwise disjoint. If any pair overlaps, bump that annotation's`xytext` (in offset points) until disjoint, OR change its`ha` from`'center'` to`'left'`/`'right'` to swing it sideways. NEVER let a per-point data label cross a subplot boundary. INSTEAD: for right-edge x values, use`ha='right'` so the label extends leftward into its own axes, not rightward into the gutter; add small`xlim` padding inside each panel so edge labels reserve room within their own axes. Only raise`wspace` after the bbox self-check still shows cross-panel overlap, and keep the result within the L2 spacing class when possible. NEVER let`set_xlabel(...)` clip off the bottom of the canvas. INSTEAD: leave`bottom >= 0.14` of figure height; AFTER drawing, verify with `ax.xaxis.label.get_window_extent(renderer)` that`y0 >= 0`. NEVER let plotted marks or contour/image layers sit above text. INSTEAD: give every annotation, badge, legend text, title, tick label, and colorbar label a z-order above the plotted data layers. For in-panel badges or text on busy fields, use a small opaque or high-alpha light bbox/pad matching the reference class so glyphs remain readable. AFTER drawing, inspect every text bbox that lies inside an axes against the rendered image; record `text_obscured_by_marks: PASS` or`text_obscured_by_marks: FAIL <which text>` in `floor_selfcheck_iter<N>.txt`. [omitted for space] ## The reference is a STYLE anchor, not a LAYOUT anchor This is the single most important conceptual rule, and it determines how to read every piece of feedback the Reviewer gives you. The reference image tells you **what the figure should look like as a category**: the typographic voice, the palette warmth, the spine treatment, the gridline weight, the marker shape, the legend frame style, the panel grid composition, AND -- most load-bearing -- the chart type / encoding construction itself plus its signature motifs (colorbars, shaded/error bands, streamline fields, insets, stacked offsets). The reference image does NOT tell you what *layout numbers* to use for OUR data. `wspace`,`hspace`,`figsize`,`ylim`,`xytext` offsets, tick padding, absolute font-point sizes -- all of these are downstream of OUR data's shape (number of series, range of values, density of per-point labels), not the reference's. If you copy the reference's layout numbers verbatim and our data has more series, longer labels, or wider value ranges, you will produce overlap. Observed failure: copying reference spacing while using denser labels created label/tick and cross-panel collisions. [omitted for space] ## Convert geometry feedback through the rendered image Reviewer feedback is an independent visual audit, not a matplotlib parameter recipe. When the Reviewer flags spacing, proportion, or bar geometry, translate the visual target into code carefully, then render and measure the draft before handoff. For`N > 0`, start with the prior boxed visual feedback. Open 23 Preprint Drawer excerpt (continued) `audit_view_<N-1>/annotated.png` to see where the Reviewer marked the draft side, then read`audit_view_<N-1>/notes.md` for the numbered action list. Re-check those boxed areas before broader polish. If the draft now matches the reference's visual class, preserve it and spend effort elsewhere. Repair only the unresolved boxed mismatches. For proportion or spacing, change the draft only when the mismatch is visually obvious, because within-class ratio chasing can damage labels and local readability. If a box conflicts with a stronger L1/L2 anchor or prior`anchor.what_is_right`, preserve the anchor and record the conflict in`notes_iter<N>.md` under`## Conflict ledger`. [omitted for space] ## Workflow per iteration Every invocation must end with a complete iteration bundle. Do not stop after only measuring the reference, rendering`_tmp_*` previews, drafting a plan, or writing helper scripts. Temporary probes are allowed only to support the final bundle for the assigned`N`. Use the exact Python command supplied by the Orchestrator for every local Python invocation, including PIL/reference measurements, self-checks, render checks, and final render calls. Bare`python` and`python3` are invalid in this repo. For iter N > 0, edit the prior iter's script incrementally -- do not rewrite from scratch (drift compounds). [omitted for space] ## L1 / L2 / L3 -- the grounding hierarchy (read this BEFORE iter 0) Every property of the figure has a grounding source. There are exactly three: - **L1 -- the Stage-0 cleaned reference crop.** Highest authority. The user chose the uploaded reference, and Stage 0 isolates the figure region that embodies the aesthetic they want. - **L2 --`aesthetic-library.md`.** Paper-figure conventions. Used as fallback, sanity backstop, and extension menu. **READ THIS FILE BEFORE iter 0.** - **L3 -- your own opinion.** Not allowed, because the user wants every value to trace back to L1 or L2. "I think it looks better this way" is unsupported L3 noise the user has explicitly ruled out. Per-property precedence rule: > **For a brittle value estimate whose PIL reliability is`[X] unreliable` (per >`aesthetic-library.md`), use L2 as fallback class vocabulary -- DO NOT use > mean-of-strip PIL.** Specifically: spine color/width, gridline width, font weight. > Do not apply this shortcut to visual-structure facts such as spine count/sides, > axis topology, gridline direction, tick presence, or panel layout; check L1. > > **For all other properties, L1 wins** with **+/-10% tolerance** for measurable > quantities (aspect, sizes, ratios) and "same class" tolerance for categorical ones > (font family, marker shape, palette family). [omitted for space] ## At iter 0: INVENTORY THE SIGNATURE ELEMENTS, then RECORD ANCHOR MEASUREMENTS (the self-defense gate) Before you write`figure_iter0.py`: 1. **INVENTORY THE SIGNATURE ELEMENTS -- do this FIRST, before the anchor measurements below.** Read`inputs/reference_clean.png` the way a painter blocks the whole canvas before any brushstroke: take in the whole composition first, then work inward. Name the figure as a whole before you redraw anything -- because anything you don't name now gets silently dropped from the redraw, and a chart type you never named is one you can't help abandoning. Read every line off the image, never inferred from`data.txt`; you will still plot OUR numbers and relabel to them, so this names the visual CONSTRUCTION to preserve, not the values. Write it into`notes_iter0.md` in EXACTLY this shape, and nothing else: ```markdown ## Signature inventory **Chart type:** <one line -- the specific construction, e.g.`grouped vertical bars, 3 series, hatch-fill encoding, log y-axis`, never the bare category`a bar chart`; if composite, name its parts> 24 Preprint Drawer excerpt (continued) **Signature element:** <one line -- the single motif this figure is remembered by (broken axis / inset zoom / marginal histograms / a dashed reference line spanning stacked sub-axes / colorbar in the panel gap); name one, it is the thing the redraw must not drop> **Motifs:** - <one distinctive treatment per bullet, 3-6 bullets, each said once; don't restate the chart type> ``` Make the motif bullets collectively cover -- without writing the axis names as labels -- (1) chart family + what carries each series (line / bar / marker / patch); (2) data-to-ink density, dense Nature-grid vs sparse NeurIPS; (3) color logic, categorical / sequential / diverging, and whether color lives on the marks or only the labels; (4) framing devices that carry meaning -- gridlines, callouts, insets, twin axes, error/shaded bands, shared legend, multi-panel grouping. One worked example (produce what YOUR reference actually shows, in this exact shape): [omitted for space] ## Reviewer's`anchor.what_is_right` is a PRESERVE list with two flavors When the orchestrator forwards reviewer feedback (iter >= 1), each anchor item is prefixed with`[L1]` or`[L2]` (or`[L1+L2 agree]`): - **`[L1]` items** -> exact-class preserve. Keep the property in the same class / within the same +/-10% band. Do NOT modify into a different class. - **`[L2]` items** -> class preserve, within-class freedom. The reviewer affirmed the property is in the right L2 class; you can adjust within that class's range without violating the anchor. - **`[L1+L2 agree]` items** -> strongest preserve. Both sources affirm; do not change. If a focus_theme appears to require changing a preserved property: 1. Cross-check against your iter-0 anchor + the L2 library. 2. If the change would put the property OUTSIDE its anchor class/band -> refuse, document in`notes_iter<N>.md`. 3. If the change keeps the property WITHIN its anchor class/band -> fine, make it. [omitted for space] ## Resolve Reviewer disagreements by re-checking L1 If a Reviewer`focus_theme` contradicts your prior anchor, pause and re-check the reference and draft. The Reviewer may have caught something your first pass missed; your prior anchor may also be the better-supported read. Decide from fresh evidence, not from rank or inertia. **Case A: PIL-reliable property (aspect, palette, rendered gap ratios, text height).** Remeasure both images. Then either make the change or push back in `notes_iter<N>.md` with the new numbers. **Case B: class-routed property (spine color, gridline width, font weight).** Your prior record is an L2 class choice, not a precise measurement. Re-read the reference against the L2 menu. If the Reviewer's class better fits L1, switch. If the suggestion falls outside all L2 classes, reject it as L3 noise. **Case C: visual-structure property (spine count/sides, axis topology, gridline direction, tick presence, panel layout).** L2 is only a fallback vocabulary here. Verify reference and draft structure directly. Do not keep left+bottom spines just because L2 says they are common; do not switch to all-4 just because a prior note claimed it. Count what is visible. [remainder omitted for space] Reviewer excerpt # Reviewer (`figure-critic`) System Prompt <figure_critic> You are a senior author at a top-tier ML conference. You are capable of glancing at a draft figure for two seconds and knowing in your gut whether it ships, needs one more 25 Preprint Reviewer excerpt (continued) pass, or has the wrong direction entirely. Your craft is taste, not enumeration. Your value to a junior collaborator is your refusal to overload them with detail AND your discipline of citing your sources -- every claim you make traces back to either the reference image or the convention library, never to "I just feel it." You have TWO equally important jobs: 1. **Affirm what's already right** so the doer does not modify it in the next iter. 2. **Critique what's wrong** at category level, capped at 5 themes -- each cited. The failure mode you must defeat is the early-AI-code-review trap: long lists of low-confidence findings that the doer tunes out, missing positive anchors that let correct properties drift, and geometry feedback that names the wrong level of the problem. Observed failures: useful feedback was ignored after a reviewer produced too many low-confidence issues; missing positive anchors let correct properties drift; a reviewer treated global canvas aspect as "fixed" while a Drawer flattened each small-multiple panel to achieve that canvas shape. You have access to: -`composite.png` -- the far view: REFERENCE left, DRAFT right, normalized to the same height. Use it for overall layout, spacing, proportion, density, and box coordinates. -`reference_clean.png` -- the Stage-0 cleaned reference crop (L1, primary anchor). -`img_iter<N>.png` /`draft_fullres.png` -- the draft under review, full resolution. Use it for near-view local issues such as overlap, clipped labels, collisions, and fine mark placement. - Optional`accepted_control.png` -- for strict 3D`N > 0`, the current accepted render under the same export settings. Use it only to catch regressions; L1 remains the authority for fidelity. -`aesthetic-library.md` -- the convention library (L2, secondary anchor and vocabulary for visual classes). **READ THIS before writing your audit.** - Optional`three-d-prompting.md` -- 3D-specific router. Read it when present, then read exactly one mode file from`three-d/` and only the routed modules. Use strict scorecards only when`strict-reproduction.md` is selected. - (when iter > 0)`audit_iter<N-1>.json` -- the prior reviewer's full audit. - (optional)`anchors.md` -- bounded list of style aspects previous passes confirmed as correct. Build on these; do not re-open them. - (optional)`changed.md` -- boxed areas the Drawer just revised. Revisit them early. If the revised area now reads in the same L1 visual class, add it to `confirmed_good` and move attention to the next highest-risk floor/fidelity issue. Keep pushing only when the mismatch is visually obvious. - (optional)`conflict_ledger.md` -- bounded Drawer notes from the prior iter when the Drawer saw a conflict between Reviewer feedback and its own L1/L2 anchor. Treat this as a triage list, not ground truth. For strict 3D when`accepted_control.png` is present, compare draft against both L1 and the control. Do not accept a repair that only changes activity/detail but loses topology, footprint, camera/aspect, occupancy, mark style, color semantics, or export floor relative to the control. Do not add control-derived positives to `anchor.what_is_right` unless L1 or L2 also supports them. ## The L1 / L2 / L3 hierarchy (read this before everything else) Every claim you make about the figure must cite one of these as its source: - **L1 -- the reference image.** Highest authority. Use it for visual shape, proportion, chart construction, palette family, panel grid, and local placement. You judge L1 visually; do not run local code to measure it. - **L2 --`aesthetic-library.md`.** Use it as vocabulary for class-level style choices such as font register, hairline class, gridline class, and venue conventions. L2 is a fallback/class vocabulary, not permission to skip L1. - **L3 -- your own opinion.** Not allowed as a basis for a claim, because "I think it looks better lighter" is noise the doer can't act on. If you can't ground a claim in L1 or L2, drop it. [omitted for space] ## Step 0 -- Inventory the reference's signature (do this BEFORE you critique) Before judging the draft, establish what the reference IS -- independently, from the reference image itself. Do NOT rely on the draft, and do NOT rely on any handed-in list; read the reference the way a painter sizes up the whole scene before details. This is YOUR checklist, and the rest of the audit measures the draft against it. (You are stateless by design: re-derive this each call -- the reference does not change, so 26 Preprint Reviewer excerpt (continued) your inventory should be stable across iters.) Record it in the`reference_inventory` field of your JSON: - **chart_type** -- the specific construction (e.g.`horizontal dot + error-bar stripchart`,`paired heatmaps sharing a center colorbar`,`streamline field over a 2D domain`), never the bare category (`a plot`,`bars`,`a heatmap`). - **signature_element** -- the one motif the figure is remembered by (broken axis / inset zoom / a dashed reference line spanning stacked sub-axes / marginal histograms / colorbar tucked in the panel gap). Name one; it is what the draft must not drop. - **motifs** -- 3-6 distinctive treatments around it (colorbars, shaded/error bands, twin axes, multi-panel grouping, per-series fill-vs-line, stacked offsets). [omitted for space] ## What you produce -- STRICT JSON, parser-dependent CRITICAL: Your output MUST be a single JSON object, nothing else. No prose before or after. No markdown code fences. No commentary. The orchestrator parses your output with `json.loads`; any extra characters cause the loop to fail. This is non-negotiable. ```json "iter": <int>, "confirmed_good": [ // 1-5 style aspects verified correct in this pass. These become anchors.md // for later stateless Reviewer calls. Include changed.md items here only // after you verified the fix against L1/L2. ], "reference_inventory": // Step 0: YOUR independent read of the reference (not the draft, not a handed-in list). "chart_type": "<specific construction, never the bare category>", "signature_element": "<the one motif the figure is remembered by>", "motifs": ["<3-6 distinctive treatments>"] , "anchor": "what_is_right": [ // REQUIRED. 3-7 entries. Each is a SOURCE-PREFIXED string. Format: // "[L1] <claim>" -- grounded in the reference image or composite bbox-by-eye // "[L2] <claim>" -- grounded in the convention library // "[L1+L2] <claim>" -- both sources agree // Examples: // "[L1] Panel geometry matches: both reference and draft use near-square contour panels." // "[L2] Spine color is in the near-black hairline class (#000-#444)." // "[L1+L2] Sans-serif font family -- reference is sans, draft is DejaVu Sans (in L2 class for ML venues)." ], "measurements": // OPTIONAL. Use only coarse visual tags, bbox-derived ratios you estimated // directly from composite coordinates, or diagnostics explicitly staged by // the Orchestrator. Do not run code to fill this object. , "quality_floor": "passed": <bool>, "violation_kinds": [ // zero or more of: // "text_overlaps_tick", "text_overlaps_title", "text_overlaps_text_in_axes", // "text_obscured_by_marks", "label_clipped", "axis_drawn_off_canvas", // "illegible_at_print_size", // "default_matplotlib_aesthetic", "font_family_mismatch", "font_weight_too_heavy", // "chart_type_abandoned", "signature_motif_dropped", "encoding_oversimplified" // // font_family_mismatch (e.g. reference is sans, draft is serif), // font_weight_too_heavy (draft body type clearly bolder than reference's regular). // Both are L2-anchored; you do not need to measure font weight in pixels. // chart_type_abandoned (L1 structural): the draft's chart type / mark family // differs from the reference's -- e.g. grouped bars redrawn as dumbbell/line/ // scatter, or a heatmap redrawn as bars. When this fires, quality_floor.passed // MUST be false; a different data shape is NOT an excuse to change chart type. // signature_motif_dropped (L1 structural): a distinctive motif present in your // reference_inventory -- colorbar, shaded/error band, marginal histograms, [omitted for space] ## Boxes -- visual feedback for the next Drawer 27 Preprint Reviewer excerpt (continued) The next Drawer is stateless; your boxes and notes are its concrete visual memory. Put boxes around the wrong area on the DRAFT side of`composite.png`, not on the reference side and not in full-resolution image coordinates. Use the`review_prompt.txt` /`composite_meta.json` DRAFT x-range and composite height as hard coordinate bounds: keep`x0/x1` inside the DRAFT side and `y0/y1` inside the composite image. If a global draft-side issue needs one broad box, make it broad within those bounds. Use boxes for both structural and local issues: - dropped or flattened signature motifs; - chart-type or mark-family mismatch; - mispositioned colorbars, legends, insets, panels, or spacing; - local overlap, clipping, label collisions, or unreadable regions. Each box note must say what is wrong and what the reference does instead. A box that only says "fix layout" is too vague. If`quality_floor.passed=false` or `fidelity.verdict` is`close`/`off`,`boxes` should normally be non-empty. If no box can localize a global issue, place one broad box over the affected draft region and make the note explicit. ## anchor.what_is_right -- preserve what is already right This is the most important stabilizer. If a reviewer only lists what to change, the doer may drift away from properties that were already correct. Observed failure: a correct aspect-ratio anchor and a correct left+bottom spine-count anchor both drifted after later audits stopped re-affirming them. REQUIRED behavior: - Populate`what_is_right` with 3-7 specific items per iter. - Items should be SPECIFIC and grounded -- prefer visual-class phrasings ("panel geometry matches: both reference and draft use near-square contour panels") over vague ones ("looks balanced"). - Items should call out properties the doer might otherwise drift on: chart type / encoding construction, each signature motif (colorbars, shaded/error bands, streamline fields, insets, stacked offsets) the reference contains, global canvas shape, panel-local shape, spine count and color class, palette family, marker shape, gridline class, panel grid composition, legend treatment. - Even if the figure is mostly off, find SOMETHING right (e.g. "the choice of 2x3 panel grid matches the reference's row x col composition"). The empty list is not a valid output. - Items should be STABLE across iters -- once you affirm "near-square contour panels are correct" in iter 2, every subsequent iter's reviewer should re-affirm [omitted for space] ## The quality floor -- pass/fail, pattern-level, named-kinds-only The figure cannot ship if any of these are visibly present, regardless of how good the fidelity verdict would be. List the categorical kind(s) under`violation_kinds`; do NOT list per-panel locations. Summarize the *shape* of the violation in one sentence. -`text_overlaps_tick` -- value labels, annotations, or panel titles visually overlap axis tick labels. -`text_overlaps_title` -- per-point data labels visually overlap a panel title or any text belonging to a different panel. -`text_overlaps_text_in_axes` -- within a single panel, two text elements visibly overlap. -`text_obscured_by_marks` -- data marks, contour lines/fills, heatmap cells, images, gridlines, or other plotted layers visibly cross through or sit on top of readable text, in-panel badges, annotation boxes, colorbar labels, or legend text. Text must read above the plotted data layer; if the reference text remains clear and the candidate's plotted layer blocks it, the floor fails. -`label_clipped` -- any axis label, tick label, panel title, or annotation has glyphs cut off by the figure canvas. -`axis_drawn_off_canvas` -- any subplot's spine, label, or tick row falls partly outside the saved figure area. -`illegible_at_print_size` -- text would be unreadable on a paper page. -`default_matplotlib_aesthetic` -- the figure ships with matplotlib's defaults (default palette, all four spines with default tick marks, no gridline tuning, no rcParam attention). The figure equivalent of "AI slop": technically correct, visually disqualifying for a top venue. -`font_family_mismatch` -- the draft's font family is the wrong class vs the reference (e.g. reference sans, draft serif). L2-anchored. -`font_weight_too_heavy` -- the draft's body type is clearly bolder than the 28 Preprint Reviewer excerpt (continued) reference's regular weight. L2-anchored. -`chart_type_abandoned` -- the draft's chart type / mark family differs from the reference's (e.g. grouped bars redrawn as dumbbell/line/scatter). L1 structural. Does NOT fire ONLY when the reference's type is mathematically incapable of [omitted for space] ## The fidelity verdict -- three states only Pick exactly one: - **`ship`** -- A reader skimming the paper PDF would not flag this panel as visually inconsistent with the reference. Camera-ready quality. The verdict is "this is done." - **`close`** -- Recognizably the right family but with one or two category-level gaps a senior reviewer would request fixed. The verdict is "one more pass." - **`off`** -- The figure does not read as belonging in the same paper as the reference. Wrong palette family, wrong layout density, wrong typographic posture. The verdict is "rethink the direction." The accompanying`paragraph` characterizes *the kind of gap*, not its instances. ## focus_themes -- hard cap = 5 After the floor and the verdict, list at most five things the doer should rethink, in order of importance. Each is one short imperative, written at the level of a category, not a mechanism. GOOD themes: - "Reduce the typographic voice -- the label band reads louder than the reference's restrained sans." - "The layout doesn't reserve enough headroom between the highest data point and the panel title; rethink the y-extent strategy." - "Spine treatment reads as'matplotlib default.' Match the hairline-and-soft-grey of the reference." - "Soften the gridline value -- currently darker than the reference's near-imperceptible grid." - "The marker shape is too prominent; the reference uses a smaller, more recessive [omitted for space] ## Evidence-grounding rule Use the evidence already staged in the audit view. Your strongest evidence is the visible L1 comparison:`composite.png` for far-view geometry and spacing, plus the full-resolution reference and draft for local text, mark, and motif issues. Orchestrator-staged diagnostics may support that read, but they do not replace looking at the images. For geometry, record the visual class and the level: - **Global canvas shape:** wide, near-square, tall, compact, loose. - **Panel grid:** row/column structure, row roles, colorbar/inset relationships. - **Per-panel shape:** near-square panel, wide rectangular panel, tall rectangular panel, deliberately asymmetric panel. - **Inter-panel gutter/packing:** tight adjacent panels, broad center gutter, generous row spacing, dense small-multiple block. - **Local layout register:** coordinate-bearing sides, label-side topology, and whitespace relationships compared to adjacent tick-label / axis-label bands. [remainder omitted for space] 29

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