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time-series family

area-stacked

Multiple area series stacked atop each other over time.

Composition over time, where the total height is the sum and each band is one component. Strong when the total trajectory and the share within it both matter.

When to use

3–6 components where both composition and trend matter.

When NOT to use

You need precise comparison of middle bands (only the bottom band shares a baseline). Use line per series instead.

Rhetorical roles

  • evolve
  • decompose

Variants & related

Required primitives

  • has_legend
  • has_axis_titles

Optional primitives

  • has_data_labels
  • has_source_note

Common anti-patterns

  • rainbow-palette
  • too-many-bands

Disambiguation rules

  • Multiple coloured bands stacked top-to-bottom.
  • If the top band reaches 100% across all x, this is a 100% stacked area (still encode as area-stacked).