# Flint (AI) Flint is a visualization language designed for AI agents, built by Microsoft Research with the IDEAS Lab at Renmin University of China. MIT licensed. Instead of making a model produce hundreds of lines of chart configuration, you hand it a compact spec: the data, semantic type annotations (70+ types like "Quantity" or "Temperature"), and encoding choices. The compiler derives everything else: scales, axes, spacing, labels, legends, layout. ## What it provides - One compact spec that compiles to native chart specifications for Vega-Lite, ECharts, or Chart.js; 30+ chart types from a single input - Semantic typing, so defaults come from what the data means rather than just its shape - Automatic layout that adapts to data cardinality and constraints, no manual tuning - An MCP server (`npx -y flint-chart-mcp`) so agents can create, validate, and preview charts mid-conversation - The `flint-chart` npm package (Node 18+); a Python port is under development ## Why it matters Chart generation is a classic LLM failure mode. Verbose specs mean lots of tokens and lots of small mistakes: broken scales, overlapping labels, wrong axis types. Flint shrinks what the model has to get right and lets a deterministic compiler own the polish. That's the same philosophy behind every good agent tool: give the model a small, high-level surface and push the fiddly details into code. Anyone wiring reporting or [[Data Visualization]] into an agent workflow should look at this before hand-rolling Vega-Lite prompts. ## References - Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/flint-chart - Project site with live editor, gallery, API reference and MCP docs: https://microsoft.github.io/flint-chart/ - npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/flint-chart ## Related - [[Data Visualization]] - [[Model Context Protocol (MCP)]] - [[AI Agents]]