Basic Vega-Lite syntax reference: mark types, encoding channels, field types, and common transforms. Does not cover advanced topics such as custom signals, event streams, or low-level Vega primitives. Call this if you are unsure how to express a basic chart type or transform in Vega-Lite.

Render a Vega-Lite or Vega chart from a JSON spec. **Prefer Vega-Lite** — it handles axes, scales, legends, and layout automatically and covers the vast majority of chart types (bar, line, scatter, area, pie, heatmap, layered, faceted, and more). Fall back to raw Vega only when Vega-Lite cannot express the visualization (e.g. custom force layouts, complex signal networks). Vega-Lite: chart type comes from mark + encoding combinations; every encoding channel must include "type" ("quantitative", "nominal", "ordinal", or "temporal"). Use named data sources ("data": {"name": "tableName"}); pass records via the data parameter; URL sources blocked. Call learn_vegalite_syntax for syntax help.