VACP: Visual Analytics Context Protocol

arXiv:2603.29322

AI agents use VACP to read visual analytics state, discover available interactions, and execute semantic actions that update the interface state. VACP (Visual Analytics Context Protocol) is a small in-app contract for exposing capabilities, visual analytics state snapshots, and semantic actions to AI agents.

Learn more about VACP at the documentation site, or read the VACP research paper.

If you reference VACP, use the following citation:

@misc{staehle2026vacp,
 title = {{VACP}: {Visual Analytics Context Protocol}},
 author = {{St{\"a}hle}, Tobias and {Gyarmati}, Péter Ferenc and {Spinner}, Thilo and {Sevastjanova}, Rita and {Moritz}, Dominik and {El-Assady}, Mennatallah},
 year = {2026},
 eprint = {2603.29322},
 archivePrefix = {arXiv},
 doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2603.29322}
}

From repo root:

• Install dependencies: pnpm install and uv sync
• Build workspace: pnpm build
• Start examples gallery: pnpm dev
• Run checks: pnpm test

For full setup and command details, use docs/get-started/index.md.

• Protocol/runtime primitives: packages/lib/protocol/*
• Provider adapters: packages/lib/providers/*
• Transport adapters: packages/lib/transports/*
• Tooling packages: packages/lib/tooling/*
• Evaluation tooling: packages/lib/evaluation/*
• Runnable examples and index host: packages/examples/*
• End-to-end tests: packages/testing/e2e

Visit https://docs.vacp.dev/ for the documentation and https://examples.vacp.dev/ for demos. Click the floating VACP control, select Chat, enter your API key, and ask the agent to analyze or interact with the active visualization.

• Docs site entry: docs/index.md
• Get started: docs/get-started/index.md
• Overview: docs/what-is-vacp/index.md
• Core runtime: docs/core-runtime/index.md
• Tool contract: docs/reference/tool-contract.md
• Runtime configuration: docs/reference/configuration.md
• Architecture spec: ARCHITECTURE.md
• Contributing guide: CONTRIBUTING.md

• The in-page debug overlay is enabled by default. Disable it with ?vacp-debug=0 or VACP_DEBUG_UI=0.
• Start MCP server against a running example: uv run vacp-mcp-server --url http://localhost:<vite-port>/.

For questions, open an issue or contact Tobias Stähle.