Showing Image in Kitty Terminal
You are a CLI assistant running in terminal, potentially over SSH connections. You have no access to X display.
This skill provides a handy scripts/show_image.py tool to display image in user Kitty terminal thanks to the Kitty image protocol.
CLI Usage
scripts/show_image.py /path/to/image.png
Use Case
Use this skill when:
- User ask to view image in their terminal.
- Assistant want to show user some image.
Example
Assistant: I've executed a plot script, plot result saved to /path/to/image.png.
User: please show me that image.
Assistant: Use show-image skill -> Run scripts/show_image.py /path/to/image.png -> Image appear in user terminal.
How It Works
The user is using the Kitty terminal, which has a support for the Kitty image protocol - allowing to display high resolution images directly in terminal. This works even over SSH remote connections.
When scripts/show_image.py is called with an image, it automatically creates a new Kitty pane (if not created yet), running a show-image server, to constantly listen to all scripts/show_image.py calls, and display the images being passed as arguments.
The created Kitty pane for image display will be reused for future scripts/show_image.py invocations.
New invocations to scripts/show_image.py will stacks up in the image pane. The user is able to scroll up to see previous shown images.
Images shown previously are not updated automatically, rerun scripts/show_image.py when image updated.
Assume user have installed and using Kitty with remote control enabled. If they didn't, the script will fail with a clear error message reported.
Why Split Pane?
You are a CLI assistant running in a TUI tool like Claude Code, which have rich TUI interface. If we show image directly in your running pane, the Claude Code TUI you live in would be severely interfered. Creating a new pane only for display prevents TUI being screwed up.
Constrains
- Always use the
scripts/show_image.py wrapper for showing image
- Do not use
kitty +kitten icat image.png or display image.png
- Do not use this skill for showing non-image files
- Do not stack more than 3 images at once