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🔗 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 Google Custom 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)
  • Google API quota: 100 free queries/day, then $5/1k

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

Self-Hosting

1. Google Programmable Search Engine

  1. Go to programmablesearchengine.google.com → Add
  2. Toggle Image search to On
  3. Under Sites to search, add the sites from assets/sites-to-search.xml
  4. Save and copy your Search Engine ID (cx)
  5. You can edit this site list anytime from the control panel

2. Google Custom Search API Key

  1. Go to Google Cloud Console
  2. Create a project → APIs & Services → Library
  3. Enable Custom Search API
  4. APIs & Services → Credentials → Create Credentials → API Key

3. 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

4. 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

5. Secrets

Settings → Environment variables:

Variable Description
GOOGLE_API_KEY Custom Search API key
GOOGLE_CSE_ID Search Engine ID (cx)

6. WAF Rules

Security → WAF → Rate limiting rules:

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

7. Deploy

Fork this repo, connect to Cloudflare Pages, deploy.

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

Stack

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

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