name: themes-palettes
description: "Use seaborn theme, style, context, palette, colormap, color
utility, and optional interactive palette widget APIs."
disable-model-invocation: true
metadata:
disco-role: operating
license: BSD 3-Clause
Themes and Palettes
Use this sub-skill when the task asks about seaborn aesthetics, set_theme, axes_style, plotting_context, color_palette, palette generation, colormaps, dark mode, or interactive palette widgets.
Route Here For
- Setting global defaults with
set_theme, set, set_style, set_context, or set_palette.
- Temporary styles with
axes_style, plotting_context, and color_palette context managers.
- Choosing categorical palettes, sequential/diverging colormaps, cubehelix, HLS/HUSL, blend/dark/light palettes, xkcd/crayon colors, or matplotlib palettes.
- Visualizing palettes with
palplot.
- Color helper functions:
desaturate, saturate, set_hls_values.
- Optional interactive chooser functions that require
ipywidgets.
Use Another Sub-skill For
- Plot family parameter choices:
../function-interface/SKILL.md.
- Objects property mapping and scale objects:
../objects-interface/SKILL.md.
- Figure/grid sizing or legends:
../figure-grids/SKILL.md.
Start With
- Decide whether the color variable is categorical, sequential numeric, or diverging around a meaningful center.
- Choose a palette/colormap that matches the data semantics and output background.
- Use context managers for temporary style/palette changes; use
set_theme for notebook/session defaults.
- Validate palette length and colormap behavior before using it in a complex plot.
- Treat widget choosers as optional notebook-only tools.
References
- Theme and palette API map:
references/api-reference.md.
- Palette/style recipes:
references/workflows.md.
- Failure recovery:
references/troubleshooting.md.
Quick Smoke Check
python sub-skills/themes-palettes/scripts/theme_palette_smoke.py --output theme_palette_smoke.png