# Why Astrolabe exists

I've worked with visualization tools for close to a decade, and for the last few years
I've also taught data work in most of its forms — SQL, Python, spreadsheets, Power BI,
Tableau, the list goes on.

Out of everything I've used in that time, Vega-Lite is one of my favorite ways to make a
chart. It combines things that almost never come together in one tool:

- **It's an open standard.** A chart is a plain JSON file. No registration, no account,
  no service that can be discontinued out from under it. Specs I wrote years ago still
  render today, and I have every reason to believe they'll render in ten.
- **It's web-native.** Most popular tools have to be installed (Tableau, Power BI) or run
  inside a particular environment (Altair, ggplot). For teaching, that raises the floor
  twice: technically — students on Linux can't install most BI suites at all — and
  conceptually. I want to teach _visualization_, not programming.
- **It's declarative.** This point is really an ode to the Grammar of Graphics that
  ggplot popularized: you describe what the chart is, not how to draw it. My favorite
  tool for preparing data is SQL, another declarative language, and Vega-Lite scratches
  exactly the same itch.
- **It's interactive.** This is what sets it apart from workhorses like matplotlib and
  ggplot: cross-filtering, tooltips, and brushing are a few lines of JSON, not an
  afternoon of event-handler code. Interactivity multiplies one chart into dozens — a
  different view for every filter state a reader can choose.

And yet, when I went looking for a comfortable place to write and keep these charts, I
couldn't settle on anything. Vega-Lite came buried inside heavier BI tools, or in the
official editor — a scratchpad that holds one spec at a time and keeps nothing. And using
the full power of the format was fiddly in practice: to attach a custom font to a chart,
you had to be handy with web development first. The low floor I praise to my students
wasn't there for me either.

So I decided to build my ideal tool for Vega-Lite charts :)

At first it was just a snippet editor: a list of specs, and clicking one opens an editor
with a live preview. Then datasets wanted to be their own thing — stored once, referenced
by name from any chart, instead of pasted into every spec. Then a visual chart builder,
for the days when you'd rather click than type. And then custom themes with your own
fonts — the exact itch that used to require a web developer, now a file-upload away.

Somewhere along the way the tool also acquired a stance. Everything stays in your
browser: no account, no server, and no AI model reading your charts. Part of that is
principle. Most of it is the plain reality that the data I chart at work is confidential,
and I wanted a tool where that question simply never comes up.

If you make charts with Vega-Lite — or you've been looking for a reason to start —
[Astrolabe](/) is where mine live now.