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flow family

waterfall-vertical

Standard waterfall — vertical bars cumulative bottom to top.

The most common waterfall orientation: bars rise/fall along a vertical axis, x-axis is the sequence of components (start, +revenue, −costs, +growth, end).

When to use

P&L bridges, variance walks, year-over-year decompositions.

When NOT to use

Long category labels (use waterfall-horizontal).

Rhetorical roles

  • decompose

Variants & related

Required primitives

  • has_data_labels
  • has_axis_titles

Optional primitives

  • has_source_note

Common anti-patterns

  • illustrative-without-disclosure

Disambiguation rules

  • Vertical orientation; bars stagger up and down following cumulative running total.
  • Look for explicit "start" and "end" totals as anchor bars.