piechart
EvidenceCanvasSeries
Pie or donut chart with legend — proportional wedges.
Variant
Use for part-to-whole breakdowns with three to six slices. Add the donut modifier for a hole in the middle — visually cleaner for executive decks.
donutproportionpercentage
When to use
- Three to six parts of a whole. Time allocation, budget breakdown, mix-of-business. Past six slices the wedges become unreadable and the legend overwhelms — split or pick the top five plus an
Otherslice. - Proportions matter more than precision. Pie charts are good at 'roughly a third', bad at 'is it 28% or 31%?'. If exact differences are the argument, reach for a bar chart (
progress) where the eye can compare lengths directly. - Donut for executive decks. The
donutmodifier hollows the centre — cleaner, less crowded, and the hole reads as composed rather than as a missing slice. Default to donut for board / investor decks; reserve solid pies for analyst working sessions.
When not to use
- Slices that don't sum to a whole. A pie of unrelated metrics is meaningless — the visual implies parts of a whole. If your values are independent measures, use stats or a bar chart instead.
- Two slices. A two-slice pie is just a percentage with extra steps. Use big-number or split-panel metric — the audience can read '38% / 62%' faster than they can decode a half-and-half disc.
- Comparing two pies. Side-by-side pies force the audience to compare wedge angles across two figures — humans are bad at this. Use grouped bars or a slope chart to land the comparison cleanly.
Authoring
<!-- _class: piechart donut -->
`Eyebrow · context`
## What the breakdown shows.
- First slice `40%`
- Second slice `30%`
- Third slice `20%`
- Fourth slice `10%`Slots
| Slot | Selector | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
title | h2 | yes | Slide heading framing the breakdown. |
slices | ul > li | yes | One li per slice: label text then a trailing inline-code value pill, e.g. - Marketing 40% (slices are drawn proportionally to the values). |
detail | li > ul | no | Optional nested sublist under a slice. Drives two surfaces from one source via the shared chart-family detail substrate (identical to funnel/map/quadrant/radar): (1) Present/Practice — the kernel keeps the label/value as-is, tags each wedge <path> with data-mark, and emits the sublist as an inert <template class="chart-detail"> (inside a .chart-details wrapper) the reveal layer reads; (2) the static PDF — the same detail is folded into the slide's speaker note (Label (value): item · item) as a Marp-faithful comment, which notes-core lifts into the per-slide note channel (a PDF text annotation + the hidden aside). The note rides the existing channel, so the chart pixels stay byte-identical. A pie with no sublists emits no note and is unchanged. Detail sublists must be bullet (-/*) lists, not numbered. |
Anatomy
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ header │
│ Distribution heading │
│ │
│ ╭──────╮ │
│ │▓▓▓░░░░│ │
│ │▓▓░░░░░│ ◆ 40% │
│ │░░░▓▓▓░│ ◇ 35% │
│ ╰──────╯ ○ 25% │
│ footer 1/19 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘Variants
donut — Donut — hollow centre
Hollows the pie into a donut. Visually cleaner for executive decks; the centre is left blank for a calmer read. Default pick for board and investor material.
<!-- _class: piechart donut -->
`H1 2026 · 1,840 person-hours`
## Where the engineering quarter actually went.
The toil-and-on-call slice is the one nobody put in the roadmap.
- Signal Intake build `46%`
- Scoring policy work `22%`
- Decision Log integration `18%`
- Explaining the framework to stakeholders `9%`
- Toil and on-call `5%`
Refreshed weekly · figures from the time-tracking exportcover — Cover — full-bleed with a caption band
The chart-family cover modifier: the donut + legend fill the slide and the title + a one-line takeaway reflow into a bottom caption band carrying the chart sheen. For a hero breakdown where the proportion IS the message. Chart-scoped — not an all-layout modifier.
<!-- _class: piechart cover -->
`H1 2026 · 1,840 person-hours`
## Where the planning quarter actually went.
- Deck production `46%`
- Meetings about meetings `22%`
- Realigning on priorities `18%`
- Stakeholder management `9%`
- Actually deciding `5%`
Nearly half went to producing decks; the deciding itself was the smallest slice.Related
- progresscomparable parts but precise differences matter
- statsthe values are independent metrics, not a partition
- big-numberthe headline is one slice, not the breakdown
- kpithe slices need status framing and targets