plotdown

VS Code

The plotdown extension draws plot blocks as charts in VS Code's Markdown preview and in notebooks, in the colors of your theme. It works in VS Code 1.90 or later, Cursor, Windsurf and VSCodium.

Warning

The extension is not on the Visual Studio Marketplace or Open VSX yet. Today, build the .vsix from the repository and install it.

Install it from the repository

With Node 24 and pnpm 10, in a clone of the repository:

pnpm install
pnpm build
pnpm --filter plotdown package       # packages/vscode/pack/plotdown-0.1.0.vsix
code --install-extension packages/vscode/pack/plotdown-0.1.0.vsix

Or, in VS Code, Extensions: Install from VSIX… and pick the file. Cursor, Windsurf and VSCodium take the same file (cursor --install-extension …, or their own Install from VSIX command).

Where charts appear

  • Markdown preview (Markdown: Open Preview to the Side): each block becomes a chart, redrawn as you type, with a Source button. A block with a mistake stays code, with the reason and its JSON path under it.

  • Notebook Markdown cells, in Jupyter and other notebooks.

  • Notebook outputs of type application/vnd.plotdown+json: a kernel shows a chart by displaying a block under that MIME type:

    from IPython.display import display
spec = {"marks": [{"mark": "dot", "data": [[1, 2], [2, 4], [3, 3]], "x": "0", "y": "1"}]}
display({"application/vnd.plotdown+json": spec, "text/plain": "plotdown chart"}, raw=True)

Remote data

Off by default. "plotdown.allowRemoteData" takes true or a list of origins (["https://cdn.jsdelivr.net"]), applies in trusted workspaces only, and only in the Markdown preview: notebooks never load remote data.

Write blocks with the schema

A block kept in a file of its own, named *.plotdown.json, gets completion and validation from VS Code's JSON support when it names the schema:

{
  "$schema": "https://plotdown.cc/schema/plot.schema.json",
  "marks": [{"mark": "barY", "data": [{"a": "x", "b": 1}, {"a": "y", "b": 3}], "x": "a", "y": "b"}]
}

The same file gives an image link with plotdown link chart.plotdown.json (see the command line).

More: the extension's readme.

Note

Tried with the extension built from the repository on 2026-11-12, by its end-to-end test in VS Code 1.90 and 1.146: the Markdown preview, notebook cells and outputs, the themes. Installing from the .vsix in Cursor, Windsurf and VSCodium was not tried.

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