Plot blocks

A chart in PlotPress is a fenced code block in markdown:

```plot view=monthly_revenue
Plot.barY(data, { x: "month", y: "revenue" })
```

The fence info string declares which view feeds the block. The body is an Observable Plot expression.

Available bindings

Inside the block body:

Binding	What it is
data	The rows returned by the named view, as an array of objects.
params	The current parameter values (defaults + any viewer overrides).
Plot	The Observable Plot module.
d3	A small d3 subset (d3-array, d3-time-format, d3-scale).

If the block body is a single expression, it’s wrapped in a default Plot.plot({ marks: [...] }). To override the wrapping config, return a full plot config:

```plot view=monthly_revenue
({
  marginLeft: 60,
  y: { grid: true, label: "Revenue (USD)" },
  marks: [
    Plot.barY(data, { x: "month", y: "revenue", fill: "currency" }),
    Plot.ruleY([0]),
  ],
})
```

Fence info attributes

plot view=NAME [params.KEY=VALUE ...] [height=400] [class=...]

Attribute	Meaning
view=NAME	Primary form. Name of a view exposed by the dashboard’s default connection.
query=NAME	Fallback form. Filename in queries/ without .sql. See Authoring → Queries as fallback.
connection=NAME	Override the dashboard’s default connection for this block only.
params.KEY=VALUE	Default value for a parameter.
height=NUMBER	Default plot height in pixels.

view and query are mutually exclusive. Use view whenever the database can express the slice you want — that’s the primary path.

Viewer-controlled parameters

Declare inputs in the fence body using the inputs helper:

```plot view=monthly_revenue
inputs({
  year: { type: "select", options: [2024, 2025, 2026], default: 2026 },
})

Plot.barY(data, { x: "month", y: "revenue" })
```

The backend re-runs the view with the new params; the chart re-renders.

Why this shape

• The author writes one expression. Not a component, not a JSX tree, not a config object with thirty keys. The 80% case is a one-liner.
• The author never writes a fetch. The runtime decides when to fetch, when to cache, and how to handle errors.
• The block is grep-able. “Where do we use monthly_revenue?” is grep -r "view=monthly_revenue".