cgoinglove/thursday/data-report

Data report

The form comes from the question

Pick one form and read only its file in references/ before collecting anything: it says what to collect, what the final text holds, and when a page earns its place.

Their own figures, to keep and go on with — a ledger or a budget, receipts, a bank's or a card's export, a list they add to — are not a form here: they are a sheet, a real .xlsx (the artifact skill, references/sheet.md), totals and summaries by formula, with a page only when they also ask for one.

Every form opens with the answer and its two or three numbers; a reader who stops after the first lines has what they asked for. A title says the finding ("Rent rose faster than pay"), not the topic.

Numbers by script, not by hand

The skill's script is in scripts/ of this skill's folder. node runs it; nothing to install.

S=<this skill's folder>/scripts
# A series into CSV, with its source written into the file. It prints the rows' shape and both ends.
node $S/fetch.mjs fred DGS10,MORTGAGE30US --from 2020 \
  --label "10-year Treasury,30-year mortgage" --out <scratch>/rates.csv
node $S/fetch.mjs fred SP500,NASDAQCOM --from 2025-01 --label "S&P 500,Nasdaq" --out <scratch>/px.csv

A --label names the columns in the order you asked for them, so give one for every column or none. node $S/fetch.mjs with no arguments lists every source and option.

Two more answer in a line, with no CSV and no page:

# The forecast a line a day; past the 16 days it reaches, the same days over the last five years
node $S/weather.mjs "<place>[, <country code>]" <from YYYY-MM-DD> [<to>]   # --f for °F
# An amount at today's rate, with the rate's date and source; fetch.mjs fx is the rate over time
node $S/fx.mjs 150 USD EUR,JPY

references/sources.md says which source holds what, the series ids worth knowing, and what the script cannot reach. A CSV you build from a page or a file you were given takes the same shape: a # source: <url> line (and # fetched: YYYY-MM-DD) above a header row.

A page: a document, with charts drawn into it

When the form calls for a page, it is a document: write it in Markdown in a file of your own and put it, with the artifact skill's script — the first put makes it, styled, in your folder under artifacts/. Never write chart SVG by hand: leave an empty <figure id="…"></figure> where each chart goes in the Markdown, put the document, then fill every figure in one bash call. Both scripts ship with the app:

node "$THURSDAY_SKILLS/artifact/scripts/document.mjs" put <page> <scratch>/<page>.md
C="$THURSDAY_SKILLS/artifact/scripts/chart.mjs"
node $C "$THURSDAY_ARTIFACTS/<page>.html" rates <scratch>/rates.csv \
  --title "Mortgage rates followed the 10-year down" --unit "%" --mark "2024-09=First Fed cut"
node $C "$THURSDAY_ARTIFACTS/<page>.html" px <scratch>/px.csv --index --title "…"

Each figure carries its source link, the fetch date and the rows behind it with a CSV download, so the page needs no separate data section. A line for dates, bars for categories (largest first, --highlight the one that matters, named exactly as the row is); --kind column for a value per period, --kind donut for one whole split in five parts or fewer, --kind stacked for what each row is made of (--share to compare the make-up rather than the size); --index when series in different units are compared; --mark for each dated event the text explains, inside the range drawn; --locale with the reader's language tag (de, ja, pt-BR) writes numbers and dates their way. Run it again to replace a figure, and after every later put. node $C with no arguments lists every option.

A table a form asks for — the comparison matrix, a results table, the driver rows — is a Markdown table in the document, number columns aligned right (---:) and the best cell in each row in **bold**. Never type a number into one by hand: paste what a script printed, or the figure from the page you read, and keep its source in the row or under the table.