Charts worth stealing: the design calls BI should ship
Blog post from dbt
At dbt Summit 2026, dbt Charts chartographer RJ Andrews presented the design principles behind dbt Charts, an open-source YAML-based charting language and dashboard tool launched at dbtcharts.com. He showed how small YAML changes can transform a default bar chart into formats such as area, line, or scatter charts, reflecting a shared underlying chart grammar. The product emphasizes readable defaults through right-aligned series labels, adaptive date axes, carefully designed light and dark themes, harmonious and accessibility-tested color palettes, consistent category colors across dashboards, and safeguards that warn users when data is too dense to display clearly. Additional features include precisely formatted tables, interactive stacked-chart tooltips, shareable URL-based dashboard filters, dual-axis charts with aligned gridlines, and agent-assisted generation of unconventional chart types from natural-language prompts. Andrews also described internal testing practices and noted that pattern fills for color-independent category distinction have been developed but are not yet public.
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