The chart standard, one rule per keypress.
Eight rules for every chart the agent draws, written once in charts/STANDARD.md and enforced by the renderer. Each card is one rule, with the picture it prevents and the picture it makes. Every number in the pictures is the tool's: the make rate of every field goal, season by season.
Every season on file.
A trend runs from 2021, the first season on file, through the current season, with no season skipped and no narrowing to a few weeks. The window is not a choice.
Held by: the renderer checks the command's --seasons must be 2021-2026 this season, and --weeks is refused.
84.2 to 85.6: a climb, if the chart begins in 2024.
The same two points, with the four before them and the one after. Nothing climbs.
Axes start at zero.
A rate axis runs from 0 to 100 percent. A count axis starts at 0. No axis is cut to make a flat line look steep.
Held by: the template the spec has no key for an axis, so there is nothing to cut.
85.3, 85.4, 85.8, 84.2, 85.6: a collapse in 2024 and a recovery, on an axis two points tall.
The same five numbers. The 2024 "collapse" is 1.6 points.
The count under every point.
Each rate is drawn with the number of plays behind it, so a rate from 9 kicks does not look like a rate from 900.
Held by: the template every point prints "of N" beneath it, from the tool's row.
Two rates that look like two facts of the same weight.
One kick moves the left point by 11 points. One kick moves the right one by a tenth of a point.
Two colors, and gray.
The broadcast's two lines: yellow for the thing the claim is about, blue for what it is compared with. Gray marks the current season while it is still being played, labeled with its last week on file. No third series, no third color.
Held by: the template the renderer has three colors and no key to add one.
Which line is the claim about? The legend knows. The eye does not.
Yellow is the defined kick, the line to gain. Blue is every other kick, where the field starts. Gray is this season, not finished.
The title is the question.
The chart's title is the question the agent tested, in words a fan would say, ending in a question mark, with no number in it other than a season's year. A title that states the answer is a caption, not a title. The subtitle names the entry, its file and date, and the filters.
Held by: the renderer checks no question mark, or a number that is not a year, and the spec is refused.
The reader is told what to see before seeing it. Refused: a number, and no question.
The numbers go in the ruling. A year is the one number a title may carry, because rule 1 fixes the window anyway.
The source line is the command.
Under the chart, the exact tool command that produced the rows, with the plays and seasons it read, so a reader can rerun it.
Held by: the template the line is printed from the spec's command and the tool's coverage, never typed.
What the bottom of every chart says, with this episode's spec:
Source: node episode-3/query-plays.mjs --trend long-field-goal --seasons 2021-2026 (1,530 games, latest 2026-10-25) Drawn under charts/STANDARD.md, version 1 (October 26, 2026), from the spec long-field-goal-trend.json, written 2026-11-09.
Nothing the tool did not print.
No trend line, no annotation, no second axis, no number typed in by hand. The renderer runs the command and draws what comes back, and that is all it can draw.
Held by: by construction the renderer takes a command, not numbers. The agent cannot hand it a value.
The dashed line is an opinion. The note is a second one.
If the renderer cannot get it from the tool, it cannot draw it.
The same template every week.
One shape per question. A trend is a line chart of rates by season over a bar chart of attempts per game, laid out the same way every episode, so a reader of episode 5 recognizes episode 3's chart.
Held by: by construction the SVG carries the standard's version, and there is one template to draw with.
Title, subtitle, legend; the rates; the tries per game; the source. Episode 5's chart will look like this one.
A pie, a 3D bar, a second axis in red. Three charts, three new things to learn to read.
The spec the renderer refused on air, and the sentence it printed, are on the episode page.