Minimalist library to generate SVG views of scientific data
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Just wanted to share with HN a simple/minimal open source Python library that generates SVG files visualizing two dimensional data and distributions, in case others find it useful or interesting.I wrote it as a fun project, mostly because I found that the standard libraries in Python generated unnecessarily large SVG files. One nice property is that I can configure the visuals through CSS, which allows me to support dark/light mode browser settings. The graphs are specified as JSON files (the repository includes a few examples).It supports scatterplots, line plots, histograms, and box plots, and I collected examples here: https://github.com/alefore/mini_svg/blob/main/examples/READM...I did this mostly for the graphs in an article in my blog (https://alejo.ch/3jj).Would love to hear opinions. :-)
HN · launched Mar 23, 2026 · 47 upvotes (top 17%) · 0 views
Niche: data and scientific visualization tools · 146 launches, 3 in the last 7 days ▼ -50% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Analytics & BI
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 146 launches in data and scientific visualization tools →
Could you build this?
Yes A lightweight Python library that takes numerical coordinates and computes 2D SVG strings (paths, rectangles, axes) is a self-contained math and string-formatting task easily handled with AI assistance.
Discussion
4 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: gnuplot, Claude Code / Codex for chart generation, eb_bars (Rust barplot library)
Concerns raised: Data-dependent interactions (tooltips, clickable links) unreliable on mobile, Limited to ~80% reliability for additional Javascript interactions on desktop
Feature requests: Easy-to-install skills for AI agents, Better support for agent-driven workflows
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 362 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #67 of 363 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 142 days after the earliest competitor.
- SVG2CSS · ph · 2026-09-14 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- Rust/WASM lighting data toolkit · hn · 2025-12-21 · 52 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- I built a declarative layout engine for SVG, Canvas, WebGL · hn · 2026-07-03 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Extract diagrams from PDF to SVG · hn · 2025-12-22 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- SimpleSVGs · hn · 2026-01-29 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- An SVG Inspection Tool · hn · 2026-01-01 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- High speed graphics rendering research with tinygrad/tinyJIT · hn · 2026-01-22 · 31 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- svgdiagram.ai · ph · 2026-10-11 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.49
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