Obsidian/X-Articles/chartli Thread by @MrAhmadAwais.md

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title	source	author	published	created	description	tags
Thread by @MrAhmadAwais	https://x.com/MrAhmadAwais/status/2029680947755733452	@MrAhmadAwais	2026-03-06	2026-03-06		clippings

Ahmad Awais @MrAhmadAwais 2026-03-05

Introducing chartli 📊

CLI that turns plain numbers into terminal charts. ascii, spark, bars, columns, heatmap, unicode, braille, svg.

$ 𝚗𝚙𝚡 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚕𝚒

I wanted terminal charts with zero setup. No browser, no Python env, no matplotlib. Pipe numbers in, get a chart out.

Again built using Command Code with my CLI taste.

$ npx chartli data.txt -t ascii -w 24 -h 8

8 chart types spanning a fun range of Unicode density:

- ascii (line charts with ○◇◆● markers)

- spark (▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ sparklines, one row per series)

- bars (horizontal, ░▒▓█ shading per series)

- columns (vertical grouped bars)

- heatmap (2D grid, ░▒▓█ intensity mapping)

- unicode (grouped bars with ▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ sub-cell resolution)

- braille (⠁⠂⠃ 2×4 dot matrix, highest density)

- svg (vector output, circles or polylines)

Input format is dead simple: rows of space-separated numbers. Multiple columns = multiple series.

0.0 0.1 0.1 0.1

0.2 0.4 0.2 0.4

0.3 0.2 0.4 0.2

Composes with pipes:

$ cat metrics.txt | chartli -t spark

S1 ▁▂▃▄▅▆

S2 ▁▄▂▇▅█

S3 ▁▂▄▃▆▅

S4 ▁▄▂▇▂▇

The braille renderer is my fav. Each braille character encodes a 2×4 dot grid, so a 16-wide chart gives you 32 pixels of horizontal resolution. Free anti-aliasing from Unicode.

The bars renderer uses 4 shading levels (░▒▓█) to visually separate series without color. Works on any terminal, any font.

Heatmap maps values to a 5-step intensity scale across a row×column grid, so you can spot patterns in tabular data at a glance.

SVG mode has 2 render paths: circles (scatter plot) and lines (polylines). Output is valid XML you can pipe straight to a file or into another tool.

Zero config by default, every dimension overridable (-w width, -h height, -m SVG mode).

No config files.

No themes.

No dashboards.

$ 𝚗𝚙𝚡 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚕𝚒

Or global install it.

$ npm i -g chartli

# Skill for your agents

$ npx skills add ahmadawais/chartli

If you work in terminals and want quick data visualization without leaving your workflow, try it.

⌘ let's go!!