skills/direct-img/SKILL.md

name, description

name	description
direct-img	Embed images anywhere with direct-img.link URLs, where https://direct-img.link/orange+cat returns an image directly. For finding or embedding images, photos, gifs or illustrations in chat, markdown, HTML, docs or web pages, free.direct-img.link for public domain / CC0 images, and ai.direct-img.link for generated images.

direct-img.link

https://direct-img.link/<query> returns an image found by searching for <query>. It works anywhere an image URL does.

URLs

• Words are joined with +: https://direct-img.link/golden+retriever+puppy
• Literal . and / are rejected; encode them as %2E and %2F. Other special characters are percent-encoded as usual. Max 200 characters; case and extra spaces are ignored.
• ?i=N (1–40, default 1; 1–20 on free) returns the N-th working image for the query. Each i is a different image. If there aren't i working images, an AI image is served instead (bad.webp on free).
• A URL keeps returning the same image for 90 days, then may return a different one.
• With no result or an invalid parameter, a placeholder bad image is returned.
• Any URL can be downloaded and viewed to see what it returns.

Free images

• https://free.direct-img.link/<query> returns only images marked public domain or CC0, from Openverse, then Wikimedia Commons. No credit is needed. It has far fewer images than the main host.
• ?src=openverse or ?src=wikimedia limits it to one source. src and i combine in any order.
• Some free images take a long time to load. Don't panic or assume it failed; give it time.

AI images

• https://ai.direct-img.link/<query> generates an image instead of searching, so it never comes up empty.
• Images are 512px, soft and painterly: the right colors, setting and mood, but often not the exact object, and faces come out distorted. Use it as a fallback or for abstract/mood images, not when the exact thing matters.
• ?i=N (1–1000) gives a different image of the same query. ?src=auroraimg-6m is the only (and default) source.

Rate limit

• direct-img.link: 15 new searches per day per IP
• free.direct-img.link: 100 new searches per day per IP
• ai.direct-img.link: 100 new images per day per IP
• Each host has its own counter, reset at 00:00 UTC. Only new searches count. Cached URLs keep loading after the limit is hit.
• A search's results are kept for 1 hour, so other ?i= values of a query searched in the last hour don't count either. If an image is wrong, try ?i=2, ?i=3… right away before rewording the query, since a reworded query is a new search. On ai. every new i is a new image and counts.
• Burst: ~15 requests per 10 seconds per IP