Data2story

Data Journalist Agent (Data2Story)

Turn $ARGUMENTS into a blog. Orchestrates the roles below in sequence.

Setup

Resolve paths before doing anything:

• Never hard-code machine-local paths and never ask the user to export path variables.
• Resolve SKILL_DIR = the directory containing this SKILL.md (.../skills/data2story)
• Resolve ARCHIVE_DIR = the ancestor directory that contains skills/ (two levels up from SKILL_DIR, i.e. SKILL_DIR/../..)
• Resolve DATA2STORY_ROOT = parent of ARCHIVE_DIR
• Commands below use symbolic placeholders such as ARCHIVE_DIR; replace them with resolved, quoted paths before running Bash.
• DATA_NAME = the dataset folder name (e.g. pick_a_card)
• DATA_DIR = if $ARGUMENTS is an existing path, use that path; otherwise use DATA2STORY_ROOT/data/{DATA_NAME}
• TIMESTAMP = current time formatted as MMDD_HHMM (e.g. 0401_1618): date +%m%d_%H%M (run in bash)
• PROJECT_DIR = DATA2STORY_ROOT/project/{DATA_NAME}/blog_{MODEL}_{TIMESTAMP}
• Create PROJECT_DIR/, PROJECT_DIR/assets/, PROJECT_DIR/code/

Archival

Immediately after creating PROJECT_DIR, snapshot the current skills:

mkdir -p PROJECT_DIR/archival
cp -r ARCHIVE_DIR/skills PROJECT_DIR/archival/skills

This preserves the exact skill versions used for this run.

Tools available

All media tools route through OpenRouter. Set OPENROUTER_API_KEY before any generation call.

Media generation is the Designer's job, so the media tools (text2image, text2video, image2video, text2music, embeddings) live under SKILL_DIR/designer/scripts/openrouter-*/. The full list — default models and exact python3 ... invocations — is in [designer/references/tools.json](designer/references/tools.json); full per-tool docs are each tool's own SKILL.md under SKILL_DIR/designer/scripts/openrouter-*/.

Pipeline Overview

The pipeline is a single linear sequence that produces a traceable HTML blog from raw data:

DATA → Detective → Analyst → Editor → Designer → Programmer → Auditor → Inspector → final index.html + viewer.html

Run each stage in order. Each stage reads the previous artifact(s) before starting. Do not proceed to the next stage until the current artifact is complete.

Stage 1 — Detective

Input: DATA_DIR Output: PROJECT_DIR/detective.json What: Researches external context — background knowledge, domain history, related findings, why this data matters. Each finding gets a det_xx ID.

Stage 2 — Analyst

Input: DATA_DIR, PROJECT_DIR/detective.json Output: PROJECT_DIR/code/*.py, PROJECT_DIR/analyst.json What: Exhaustive quantitative analysis of the data, informed by detective's context. All code saved to code/ as runnable scripts. Each finding gets an ana_xx ID with calculation (file + lines + output) and data_table (chart-ready data).

Stage 3 — Editor

Input: PROJECT_DIR/detective.json, PROJECT_DIR/analyst.json Output: PROJECT_DIR/editor.md, PROJECT_DIR/editor.json What: Editorial decisions — which findings matter, what the narrative arc is, what the blog argues. Each section gets an edt_xx ID with explicit references to ana_xx findings and det_xx context. No visual design.

Stage 4 — Designer

Input: PROJECT_DIR/editor.md, PROJECT_DIR/editor.json, PROJECT_DIR/analyst.json Output: PROJECT_DIR/designer.json, PROJECT_DIR/assets/* What: Data-driven creative visual decisions — how to present each point using charts, images, video, audio, maps, interactives, stat callouts, instances, or text-only treatment when appropriate. The media mix should emerge from the dataset's properties, not from a fixed checklist. The page should be multimedia-rich by default: borrow the visual language from the shared [frontend-design](../frontend-design/) skill and use all five channels (chart, image, video, audio, interactive/map) unless a channel's documented fallback would be fabricated or purely decorative. Each visual gets a des_xx ID with data_source pointing to ana_xx data_tables when data-driven. Generates selected assets. No HTML.

Stage 5 — Programmer

Input: PROJECT_DIR/editor.md, PROJECT_DIR/editor.json, PROJECT_DIR/analyst.json, PROJECT_DIR/designer.json Output: PROJECT_DIR/index.html What: Implements the final blog in HTML. Applies the theme/accent recorded in designer.json page_rhythm and borrows component + token recipes from the [frontend-design](../frontend-design/) skill. Resolves chart data from analyst.json data_tables (NO raw data access). Tags every element with data-edt, data-ana, data-det, data-des attributes for traceability.

Stage 6 — Auditor

Input: PROJECT_DIR/index.html Output: PROJECT_DIR/index.html (modified), PROJECT_DIR/auditor.json What: Detects and fixes layout issues (overlap, spacing, alignment) without changing content or design intent. Runs automatically after Programmer to ensure visual elements are properly wrapped and spaced.

Call: Skill auditor PROJECT_DIR

Stage 7 — Inspector

Input: PROJECT_DIR/index.html, all JSON files Output: PROJECT_DIR/inspector.json, PROJECT_DIR/viewer.html What: Runs sentence-level traceability verification and generates an interactive viewer. Two steps:

python3 SKILL_DIR/inspector/scripts/verify.py PROJECT_DIR --log-errors
python3 SKILL_DIR/inspector/scripts/generate_viewer.py PROJECT_DIR

Step 1 produces inspector.json (sentence→evidence mapping). Step 2 produces viewer.html (self-contained, works on file:// — no server needed). See inspector/SKILL.md for details.

Traceability: ID flow through the pipeline

det_01 ──┐
det_02 ──┤
         ├──▶ ana_01 (based_on: [det_02]) ──┐
         │    ana_02 (based_on: [])          ├──▶ edt_01 (findings: [ana_01, ana_02], context: [det_01]) ──▶ des_01 (section: edt_01, data_source: ana_01)
         │    ana_03 (based_on: [det_01])    │    edt_02 (findings: [ana_03], context: [det_02])         ──▶ des_02 (section: edt_02, data_source: ana_03)
         └────────────────────────────────────┘

Every value in the final HTML can be traced: HTML data-des="des_01" → designer.json des_01.data_source="ana_01" → analyst.json ana_01.calculation.code → verifiable.

Handoff rules

• Each artifact must be complete before the next stage starts.
• If an artifact is missing required sections, fix it before proceeding.
• Media-richness gate (after Designer, before Programmer): designer.json should exercise all five channels (chart, image, video, audio, interactiveormap). For any channel marked used:false, confirm its documented fallback was genuinely tried and a data-grounded reason recorded in meta.media_decisions. If a channel was skipped for convenience rather than because the data can't support it, send it back to the Designer before the Programmer runs.
• All generated assets go into PROJECT_DIR/assets/ only.
• Final deliverables: PROJECT_DIR/index.html, PROJECT_DIR/detective.json, PROJECT_DIR/analyst.json, PROJECT_DIR/code/*.py, PROJECT_DIR/editor.md, PROJECT_DIR/editor.json, PROJECT_DIR/designer.json, PROJECT_DIR/inspector.json, PROJECT_DIR/viewer.html.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: QinghongLin
• Source: QinghongLin/data2story-skill
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://data2story.github.io/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.