Toward AI VIS Co-Scientists: A General and End-to-End Agent Harness for Solving Complex Data Visualization Tasks

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Miao, Haichao, Li, Zhimin, Ai, Kuangshi, Tang, Kaiyuan, Wang, Chaoli, Bremer, Peer-Timo, Liu, Shusen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Miao, Haichao
Li, Zhimin
Ai, Kuangshi
Tang, Kaiyuan
Wang, Chaoli
Bremer, Peer-Timo
Liu, Shusen
author_facet Miao, Haichao
Li, Zhimin
Ai, Kuangshi
Tang, Kaiyuan
Wang, Chaoli
Bremer, Peer-Timo
Liu, Shusen
contents The ability to inspect, interpret, and communicate complex data is crucial for virtually any scientific endeavor, but often requires significant expertise outside the core domain ranging from data management and analysis to visualization design and implementation. We present an end-to-end agentic harness that, based on only the data and a high level description of the tasks, independently designs custom visual analysis applications (VIS apps). This represents an important step towards a general AI co-scientist envisioned by many as an autonomous system that can autonomously execute long horizon tasks based on high-level directions. Our proposed VIS co-scientist is an essential component of this broader AI co-scientist vision: a harness that can autonomously analyze data and design visualization solutions using a collection of agents and specialized skills that coordinate exploratory analysis, plan, configure the environment, implement, validate the interface, and most importantly evaluate the overall task completion. Each stage produces document and instruction artifacts that guide downstream work and enable iterative refinement. We validate this approach on IEEE SciVis Contests spanning multiple science and engineering fields. These contests serve as ideal proving grounds because they encode real-world complexity: ambiguous requirements, diverse data modalities, design trade-offs, and task-driven validation. Given only the data and target tasks, our system autonomously produces functional single-page VIS Apps with verified linked-view behavior, highly customized to domain experts' specified tasks and needs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_21825
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Toward AI VIS Co-Scientists: A General and End-to-End Agent Harness for Solving Complex Data Visualization Tasks
Miao, Haichao
Li, Zhimin
Ai, Kuangshi
Tang, Kaiyuan
Wang, Chaoli
Bremer, Peer-Timo
Liu, Shusen
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
68T42, 68T09
H.5.2; I.3.8; I.2.11
The ability to inspect, interpret, and communicate complex data is crucial for virtually any scientific endeavor, but often requires significant expertise outside the core domain ranging from data management and analysis to visualization design and implementation. We present an end-to-end agentic harness that, based on only the data and a high level description of the tasks, independently designs custom visual analysis applications (VIS apps). This represents an important step towards a general AI co-scientist envisioned by many as an autonomous system that can autonomously execute long horizon tasks based on high-level directions. Our proposed VIS co-scientist is an essential component of this broader AI co-scientist vision: a harness that can autonomously analyze data and design visualization solutions using a collection of agents and specialized skills that coordinate exploratory analysis, plan, configure the environment, implement, validate the interface, and most importantly evaluate the overall task completion. Each stage produces document and instruction artifacts that guide downstream work and enable iterative refinement. We validate this approach on IEEE SciVis Contests spanning multiple science and engineering fields. These contests serve as ideal proving grounds because they encode real-world complexity: ambiguous requirements, diverse data modalities, design trade-offs, and task-driven validation. Given only the data and target tasks, our system autonomously produces functional single-page VIS Apps with verified linked-view behavior, highly customized to domain experts' specified tasks and needs.
title Toward AI VIS Co-Scientists: A General and End-to-End Agent Harness for Solving Complex Data Visualization Tasks
topic Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
68T42, 68T09
H.5.2; I.3.8; I.2.11
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21825