I Built a Claude Code Plugin That Unifies 10 AI Image Providers

#claude #ai #imagegeneration #opensource

The Problem

Last month I was working on a project that needed AI-generated images. Sometimes I needed photorealistic product shots. Sometimes logos with clean typography. Sometimes artistic renders.

Each time, I had to:

Remember which API does what best
Switch credentials
Handle different response formats
Deal with rate limits

It was inefficient. So I built something better.

The Solution: Image Gen

Image Gen is a Claude Code plugin that unifies 10 AI image generation providers into one interface.

The key insight: Different providers excel at different tasks. Instead of you choosing, Claude picks the optimal provider for each prompt automatically.

Provider	Best For
OpenAI DALL-E 3	General purpose, text rendering
BFL FLUX.2	Photorealism, product shots, 4K
Stability AI	Controlled generation, img2img
Ideogram v3	Typography, logos, text in images
Google Gemini	Multi-image composition
FAL	Fast iterations
Leonardo	Artistic renders, fantasy
Recraft v3	Top ELO ranked, vector output
Replicate	Open source models
ClipDrop	Upscaling, background removal

How It Works

When you ask Claude to generate an image, the plugin:

Analyzes the prompt - What kind of image is this?
Selects the best provider - Typography? Ideogram. Photorealism? FLUX.
Generates the image - Calls the selected API
Falls back if needed - Rate limit? Try the next best option.

Installation

In Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add shipdeckai/claude-skills
/plugin install image-gen@shipdeckai/claude-skills```

Then configure at least one API key in your shell profile:

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."
export BFL_API_KEY="..."