About Astrolabe
Astrolabe is a lightweight, browser-based snippet manager for Vega-Lite visualizations.
It's designed to help you quickly create, organize, and iterate on visualization specs without
the overhead of a full development environment.
Everything runs locally in your browser—no server, no signup, no data leaving your machine.
Your snippets and datasets are stored using browser storage, so they persist across sessions.
Key Features
- Three-panel workspace — Snippet library, Monaco code editor with Vega-Lite schema validation, and live preview
- Draft/published workflow — Experiment safely without losing your working version
- Dataset library — Store and reuse datasets across multiple visualizations (supports JSON, CSV, TSV, TopoJSON)
- Import/export — Back up your work or move it between browsers
- Inline data extraction — Convert hardcoded data into reusable datasets
- Search and sorting — Find snippets by name, comment, or spec content
Getting Started
1. Create a snippet
Click the "Create New Snippet" ghost card at the top of the snippet list. A sample Vega-Lite spec loads automatically.
2. Edit in the Draft view
Changes auto-save as you type. The preview updates automatically. Your published version stays safe until you're ready.
3. Publish when ready
Click "Publish" (or Cmd/Ctrl+S) to save your draft as the official version. Use "Revert" if you want to discard changes.
4. Organize with datasets
Open the Dataset Manager to create reusable datasets. Reference them in your specs using {"data": {"name": "dataset-name"}}.
Keyboard Shortcuts
| Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+N |
Create new snippet |
| Cmd/Ctrl+K |
Toggle dataset manager |
| Cmd/Ctrl+S |
Publish draft (save) |
| Escape |
Close any open modal |
Storage & Limits
- Snippets — Stored in localStorage with a 5 MB limit (shared across all snippets). The storage monitor shows current usage.
- Datasets — Stored in IndexedDB with effectively unlimited space (browser-dependent, typically 50 MB+).
- Backup — Use Import/Export to save your work as JSON files. Datasets can be exported individually from the Dataset Manager.
Tips & Tricks
- Extract inline data — When editing a spec with inline data, click "Extract to Dataset" to create a reusable dataset automatically.
- Dataset references — Astrolabe resolves dataset references at render time, so you can freely switch between inline and referenced data.
- Search across specs — The search box looks inside snippet names, comments, and the spec content itself.
- Linked datasets — The metadata panel shows which datasets a snippet uses, and the Dataset Manager shows which snippets reference each dataset.
- URL datasets — Reference remote data by URL. Astrolabe fetches and caches it for preview, but the URL is what gets stored.