image-provider-routing

Route an image generation job to the right provider based on job shape. Adapters are scaffold-tier (dry-run only) — selection produces a plan; execution waits on promotion per provider-lifecycle-discipline.

When to use

• Choosing which image model fits a brief (logo, banner, photo, icon, general art).
• Before calling any node_modules/@event4u/agent-config/src/scripts/ai-image/adapters/*.sh adapter.
• When the user asks "which image model should I use?" or "route this image job."

Provider decision table

Job shape	Provider	Why
Text-in-image (logo, banner, typographic art)	Ideogram	Best glyph rendering; raster models garble text
Photoreal (product shot, portrait, scene)	Flux	Photorealism specialist; routed via fal/Replicate
Icon the set lacks	iconography first, then svg-authoring	The incumbent set wins; a missing glyph is hand-authored against its grid and checked — no provider involved
Simple geometric mark	svg-authoring	A rect/circle/path mark is cheaper and more editable hand-authored than generated, and it ends in a file rather than a plan
Complex illustrative vector art	Recraft	The only job shape left for a vector provider. State the adapter's lifecycle in the answer: experimental — scaffold tier, dry-run plumbing only, so the caller knows no asset is produced
General art / edit / multimodal	Gemini-image or GPT Image 2	Broad capability; natural-language prompts
Budget-conscious 4K upscale	Flux via Replicate	Cost-competitive at high resolution

Decision order: an icon → the incumbent set, then svg-authoring for a missing glyph; a simple geometric mark → svg-authoring; text-in-image → Ideogram; complex illustrative vector art → Recraft, with its scaffold-tier lifecycle stated; photoreal → Flux; everything else → Gemini-image (default) or GPT Image 2 (when an OpenAI key is available and an existing image is being edited).

The split exists because the single "Vector / SVG logo or icon" row sent every icon and every geometric mark to an adapter whose header reads experimental — scaffold tier. dry-run plumbing only and whose live calls exit at the adapter's own live-call guard. The routed path ended in a plan; the icon floor meanwhile sent icons to the set. Neither produced an asset for the one case that needs one — a glyph the set does not have.

Procedure

1. Extract job shape from the brief: does it need embedded text? vector output? photorealistic rendering? or general illustration?
2. Apply table — match the dominant shape to the provider row above.
3. Check lifecycle tier — all adapters are experimental (scaffold). Surface this before any live invocation.
4. Confirm with the user when shape is ambiguous (e.g., logo that could be vector OR raster typographic art → ask once).
5. Emit the routing decision in the Output format below.

Output format

1. Chosen provider — name + one-line rationale citing the job-shape match.
2. Lifecycle-tier caveat — "adapter is experimental (scaffold tier); dry-run only until a smoke trace is captured per provider-lifecycle-discipline."
3. Fallback — if the primary adapter is unavailable or the smoke trace is missing, name the next best provider and what changes.

Gotcha

• Routing a text-in-image job to a photoreal model is the #1 failure — send a logo/banner with embedded text to Flux and the text renders as garbled glyphs; it must go to Ideogram. Likewise a vector logo sent to Ideogram/Flux returns a raster PNG, not the editable <path> SVG a brand mark needs (→ Recraft).
• All four adapters (ideogram.sh, flux.sh, recraft.sh, gemini-image.sh) are scaffold-tier — dry-run plumbing only, no live generation yet. Routing produces a selection + plan; actual API calls require promotion to stable first (maintainer-captured smoke trace under agents/reference/ai-image/smoke-traces/). Surfacing a provider without its experimental tier caveat misleads the caller into expecting a rendered asset that won't come.

Good example: "Text logo for a bakery → Ideogram (text-in-image); lifecycle: experimental — dry-run plan only."

Bad example: "Use Recraft for the product photo" — Recraft is the vector path; photoreal jobs go to Flux.

Do NOT

• Do NOT invoke an adapter without surfacing its lifecycle tier (all are experimental).
• Do NOT route a text-in-image job to Flux — Flux has no glyph renderer; text garbles.
• Do NOT route a vector/SVG job to Ideogram or Flux — neither outputs genuine <path> SVG.
• Do NOT skip image-likeness-and-rights when the brief names a real person or brand mark.
• Do NOT promote an adapter from experimental to stable — that is maintainer-only via smoke trace.

See also

• prompt-engineering-image — translate the brief into provider-specific prompt grammar.
• provider-lifecycle-discipline — read lifecycle tier before any run.
• node_modules/@event4u/agent-config/src/scripts/ai-image/adapters/ — the four adapter files and their header comments.
• media-governance-routing — rights / likeness policies before generation.