📚 Tutorials & Use Cases
Step-by-step tutorials for common ChartSmith MCP use cases.
🚀 Getting Started Tutorials
Tutorial 1: Your First Business Dashboard
Goal: Create a comprehensive sales dashboard in 10 minutes.
Step 1: Connect ChartSmith MCP
npx -y @smithery/cli@latest connect "https://<YOUR_DOMAIN>/mcp"
Step 2: Prepare Your Data
I have Q4 sales data:
- Product A: Q1: $45k, Q2: $52k, Q3: $48k, Q4: $55k
- Product B: Q1: $38k, Q2: $41k, Q3: $44k, Q4: $47k
- Product C: Q1: $29k, Q2: $33k, Q3: $36k, Q4: $39k
- Product D: Q1: $22k, Q2: $25k, Q3: $28k, Q4: $31k
Step 3: Create Dashboard
Create a sales dashboard with:
1. Quarterly revenue trend (line chart)
2. Product performance comparison (bar chart)
3. Q4 market share (pie chart)
4. Growth rate analysis (scatter plot)
Use professional styling suitable for executive presentation.
Result: A complete 4-chart dashboard ready for your next board meeting!
Tutorial 2: E-commerce Analytics
Goal: Analyze online store performance with multiple visualizations.
Scenario: You run an e-commerce site and want to understand customer behavior.
Step 1: Traffic Analysis
Analyze our website traffic sources for December:
- Organic Search: 45% (12,450 visitors)
- Social Media: 25% (6,920 visitors)
- Direct Traffic: 20% (5,540 visitors)
- Paid Ads: 8% (2,216 visitors)
- Email Marketing: 2% (554 visitors)
Create a pie chart showing traffic distribution with insights.
Step 2: Conversion Funnel
Show our sales funnel performance:
Website Visitors (27,680) →
Product Views (18,400) →
Add to Cart (5,520) →
Checkout Started (2,760) →
Purchase Completed (1,380)
Create a funnel visualization with conversion rates at each stage.
Step 3: Product Performance
Compare our top products by revenue:
- Wireless Headphones: $45,230
- Smartphone Cases: $38,920
- Bluetooth Speakers: $32,150
- Screen Protectors: $28,840
- Charging Cables: $25,990
Create a horizontal bar chart with growth indicators.
📊 Advanced Use Cases
Use Case 1: Financial Planning Dashboard
Industry: Financial Services Goal: Create investor-ready financial visualizations.
Build a comprehensive financial dashboard:
1. Revenue Growth (5-year trend):
2020: $2.1M, 2021: $2.8M, 2022: $3.6M, 2023: $4.2M, 2024: $5.1M
2. Expense Breakdown (2024):
- Personnel: 45% ($2.295M)
- Operations: 25% ($1.275M)
- Marketing: 15% ($765K)
- Technology: 10% ($510K)
- Other: 5% ($255K)
3. Profit Margins by Quarter:
Q1: 18%, Q2: 22%, Q3: 25%, Q4: 28%
4. Cash Flow Analysis:
Jan: +$125K, Feb: +$98K, Mar: +$156K, Apr: +$187K...
Create professional charts suitable for investor presentations.
Use Case 2: Marketing Campaign Analysis
Industry: Digital Marketing Goal: Measure and optimize campaign performance.
Analyze our multi-channel marketing campaign:
1. Campaign Performance by Channel:
- Google Ads: 1,250 leads, $125K revenue, $15K cost
- Facebook Ads: 980 leads, $89K revenue, $12K cost
- LinkedIn Ads: 420 leads, $156K revenue, $8K cost
- Email Marketing: 2,100 leads, $78K revenue, $3K cost
2. Customer Acquisition Cost trends over 6 months
3. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) comparison
4. Lead quality score distribution
Generate insights about which channels provide the best ROI.
Use Case 3: Operations Dashboard
Industry: Manufacturing Goal: Monitor production efficiency and quality metrics.
Create an operations monitoring dashboard:
1. Production Output (daily for last 30 days):
Target: 1000 units/day
Actual: [varying between 850-1150 units]
2. Quality Metrics:
- Defect Rate: 2.3%
- First Pass Yield: 94.5%
- Customer Returns: 0.8%
3. Equipment Utilization:
- Line A: 87%
- Line B: 92%
- Line C: 78%
- Line D: 95%
4. Downtime Analysis by cause:
- Scheduled Maintenance: 45%
- Equipment Failure: 30%
- Material Shortage: 15%
- Other: 10%
Include trend analysis and predictive indicators.
🧠AI-Powered Analytics Tutorials
Tutorial 3: Predictive Analytics
Goal: Use AI to identify trends and make predictions.
I have 2 years of monthly sales data. Can you:
1. Identify seasonal patterns
2. Predict next quarter's performance
3. Highlight any concerning trends
4. Suggest optimization opportunities
[Paste your historical sales data here]
Tutorial 4: Anomaly Detection
Goal: Automatically identify unusual patterns in your data.
Analyze this performance data for anomalies:
- Daily website traffic for the past 90 days
- Conversion rates by traffic source
- Customer satisfaction scores
- Support ticket volumes
Highlight any unusual patterns and suggest possible causes.
📱 Interactive Dashboard Tutorials
Tutorial 5: Real-time Monitoring
Goal: Create dashboards that update automatically.
Build a real-time monitoring dashboard for our SaaS product:
1. Active Users (current):
- Free Plan: 1,245 users
- Pro Plan: 456 users
- Enterprise: 23 users
2. System Performance:
- Response Time: 145ms avg
- Uptime: 99.97%
- Error Rate: 0.02%
3. Revenue Metrics (today):
- New Signups: 12
- Upgrades: 3
- Churn: 2
- MRR Growth: +$1,250
Create interactive charts with hover details and drill-down capabilities.
🎨 Styling & Branding Tutorials
Tutorial 6: Corporate Branding
Goal: Apply consistent brand styling across all charts.
Customize charts with our brand guidelines:
- Primary Color: #1E3A8A (blue)
- Secondary Color: #059669 (green)
- Accent Color: #DC2626 (red)
- Font: Inter, Arial fallback
- Logo: Include in top-right corner
Apply these styles to a quarterly performance dashboard.
Tutorial 7: Presentation-Ready Charts
Goal: Create charts optimized for different presentation formats.
Create the same revenue chart in three formats:
1. Executive Summary (high-level, minimal detail)
2. Board Presentation (dark theme, large fonts)
3. Detailed Analysis (full data, annotations)
Use our Q4 revenue data: $125K, $132K, $145K monthly progression.
🔄 Integration Tutorials
Tutorial 8: API Integration
Goal: Connect ChartSmith with external data sources.
Pull data from our CRM API and create charts showing:
1. Sales pipeline progression
2. Lead source effectiveness
3. Deal size distribution
4. Sales rep performance
Automate weekly reports with consistent formatting.
Tutorial 9: Export & Sharing
Goal: Learn all export options and sharing methods.
Create a monthly sales report and export it in:
1. PDF format for email distribution
2. PNG images for social media
3. Interactive HTML for website embedding
4. Raw data CSV for further analysis
Include instructions for automated distribution.
💡 Pro Tips & Best Practices
Data Preparation
- Clean your data before visualization
- Use consistent date formats
- Handle missing values appropriately
- Aggregate data to appropriate levels
Chart Selection
- Bar charts for comparisons
- Line charts for trends over time
- Pie charts for part-to-whole relationships
- Scatter plots for correlations
- Heatmaps for matrix data
Storytelling with Data
- Start with a clear message
- Use annotations to highlight insights
- Choose colors that support your narrative
- Keep designs clean and uncluttered
Performance Optimization
- Limit data points for complex charts
- Use caching for frequently accessed charts
- Optimize image sizes for web display
- Test on different devices and screen sizes
🎯 Next Steps
Choose a tutorial that matches your use case:
- New to ChartSmith? Start with Tutorial 1 (Business Dashboard)
- E-commerce focus? Try Tutorial 2 (E-commerce Analytics)
- Advanced user? Explore the AI-powered analytics tutorials
- Need branded charts? Check out the styling tutorials
Ready to become a ChartSmith expert? Join our community 🚀