illo skill

When to use illo skill

This is the agent-instruction page for illo skill. The same text is at /agent-instructions.md and summarized in llms.txt.

When to use this

Reach for the illo skill when the user wants an original illustration of an idea, not a search for existing artwork. Best-fit jobs: editorial illustration for a post or abstract claim; a hero plus inline images for a long article; a visual metaphor for a technical idea; a mini-comic when the idea is a story beat (fail→fix, before→after); an explainer diagram for labeled stages, a flow, fan-out, timeline, loop, stack, or system slice; a transparent cutout; an X Article banner at 1536 × 640; surprise / random when they have no thesis; installing or building a recurring character pack.

When not to use this

Do not use illo for photoreal product shots, headshots, editing an existing photo, video, stock-art lookup, or someone else's copyrighted characters. Do not call a hosted HTTP image API on this origin — there is none. Public GETs are the character catalog, OpenAPI, and a catalog-only MCP at /mcp. There is no auth token, webhook, or render endpoint. Install the skill and run it locally.

How an agent should call this

  1. If needed, install with this host's native plugin or skill manager (updates stay with the host). npx skills add is last resort only. Same table as the GitHub README and Install.
    Platform Install
    Claude Code /plugin marketplace add tmchow/illo-skill
    /plugin install illo@illo-skill
    Codex codex plugin marketplace add tmchow/illo-skill
    codex plugin add illo@illo-skill
    Grok CLI grok plugin marketplace add tmchow/illo-skill
    grok plugin install tmchow/illo-skill --trust
    Grok Bot Paste into Grok Bot (not a terminal command): Install the illo skill and all community characters. Then npx skills add tmchow/illo-skill --skill illo -g -y
    Gemini CLI gemini extensions install https://github.com/tmchow/illo-skill
    Copilot / GitHub CLI gh skill install tmchow/illo-skill illo
    Hermes hermes skills install tmchow/illo-skill/illo
    OpenClaw openclaw skills install illo
    Cursor npx skills add tmchow/illo-skill --skill illo (Marketplace listing pending)
    Other / last resort npx skills add tmchow/illo-skill --skill illo
  2. Confirm an image backend. Never spend OpenRouter automatically.
  3. Invoke /illo <idea>; add mini-comic, explainer diagram, cutout, surprise me, or X Article banner when asked.
  4. Fetch characters.json and install packs by name.