🔗 direct-img.link

Live images in markdown, powered by search.

Give your AI a system instruction to embed images using direct-img.link and they just work — no uploads, no APIs, no tokens.

Usage

![orange cat](https://direct-img.link/orange+cat)
![sunset at beach](https://direct-img.link/sunset+at+beach)
![current us president](https://direct-img.link/current+us+president)

That's it. The image is searched, cached, and served.

How It Works

1. A request hits direct-img.link/<query>
2. If cached (within 30 days) → serves the image instantly from edge
3. If not cached → searches via Brave Image Search API → compresses to WebP → caches in R2 → serves

URL Format

Use + to separate words:

https://direct-img.link/orange+cat
https://direct-img.link/new+york+city

Query	URL
orange cat	/orange+cat
spider-man	/spider-man
u.s. president	/u.s.+president
90's fashion	/90%27s+fashion
"exact phrase"	/%22exact+phrase%22

For AI System Prompts

When including images in your markdown responses, use https://direct-img.link/<query>
as the image URL. Use + to separate words. Example: ![orange cat](https://direct-img.link/orange+cat)

Rate Limits

Global (Cloudflare WAF)

Rule	Limit	Action
Global rate limit	60 requests/min per IP	Block for 1 min
Burst protection	10 requests/10s per IP	Challenge

New Searches (Cache Misses)

• 10 new searches per day per IP (resets at midnight UTC)
• Cache hits are unlimited (within WAF limits above)
• Brave API quota: $5 free monthly credits (1,000 queries), then $5/1k requests

Caching

• Images are cached for 30 days
• After expiry, the next request triggers a fresh search

Support

Free community service. Donations help cover API and infrastructure costs.

BTC: bc1qkqdmhk0we49qn74ua9752ysfxzd7uxqettymhv

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Self-Hosting

1. Brave Search API Key

1. Go to brave.com/search/api
2. Click Get Started
3. Create a Brave account or sign in
4. Subscribe — you get $5 in free monthly credits (covers 1,000 queries/month)
5. Go to your API dashboard
6. Copy your API key (starts with BSA...)

2. Cloudflare Resources

Create in your Cloudflare dashboard:

Resource	Name	Purpose
R2 Bucket	direct-img-store	Stores compressed WebP images
KV Namespace	DIRECT_IMG_CACHE	Cache existence + timestamp
KV Namespace	DIRECT_IMG_RATE	Per-IP daily search counter

3. Pages Bindings

Settings → Functions → Bindings:

Type	Variable	Resource
R2 Bucket	R2_IMAGES	direct-img-store
KV Namespace	DIRECT_IMG_CACHE	DIRECT_IMG_CACHE
KV Namespace	DIRECT_IMG_RATE	DIRECT_IMG_RATE

4. Secrets

Settings → Environment variables:

Variable	Description
BRAVE_API_KEY	Brave Search API key

5. WAF Rules

Security → WAF → Rate limiting rules:

1. Global — 60 req/min per IP → Block 60s
2. Burst — 10 req/10s per IP → Challenge

6. Deploy

Fork this repo, connect to Cloudflare Pages, deploy.

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Infrastructure Details

R2: direct-img-store

Key: <sha256-of-normalized-query>.webp — derived from query, no lookup needed.

KV: DIRECT_IMG_CACHE

Key: normalized query (lowercase, trimmed) → Value: {"t":1719000000} — TTL: 30 days

KV: DIRECT_IMG_RATE

Key: <ip>:<YYYY-MM-DD> → Value: {"c":7} — TTL: 48 hours

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Stack

• Cloudflare Pages — hosting + edge functions
• Cloudflare R2 — image storage
• Cloudflare KV — cache + rate limiting
• Cloudflare WAF — rate limiting + DDoS protection
• Brave Image Search API — image sourcing

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direct-img.link — because ![](https://direct-img.link/thing) should just work.