How to Create Thumbnails and Graphics with Claude Code

Claude Code is a terminal-first tool, but the projects it helps with often need visual assets. Thumbnails for project READMEs, social preview images, blog post graphics, icon concepts — these come up regularly and usually require stepping outside your workflow. With AgentPatch connected, Claude Code can generate them in-session.

Why This Matters

Graphics for developer projects tend to have specific requirements: they need to match a technical aesthetic, be legible at small sizes, and ideally be consistent across a project or publication. Describing those requirements clearly in a prompt is something that translates well to Recraft, which supports illustration and vector-style output suited to this kind of work.

AgentPatch includes Recraft image generation through MCP. When Claude Code has this available, generating a thumbnail or graphic is a task you can include alongside everything else you’re asking it to do.

Setup

Install the AgentPatch CLI (zero dependencies, Python 3.10+):

pip install agentpatch

Set your API key:

export AGENTPATCH_API_KEY=your_api_key

Then use it:

ap search "web search"
ap run agentpatch google-search --input '{"query": "test"}'

Get your API key from the AgentPatch dashboard.

Run this command to add AgentPatch as an MCP server:

claude mcp add -s user --transport http agentpatch https://agentpatch.ai/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your actual key from the AgentPatch dashboard. Claude Code discovers all AgentPatch tools automatically.

Example

You’re preparing an open-source project for a ProductHunt launch. You ask Claude Code:

“Generate a social preview image for our GitHub repository. The project is called ‘Forge’ — a CLI build tool. I want something clean and bold: a stylized anvil or forge graphic, dark background, orange accent color. Save it to .github/social-preview.png.”

Claude Code calls Recraft through AgentPatch to generate the image and writes the file to the specified path. If you want to also update the README:

“Add an image reference to the top of the README pointing to .github/social-preview.png.”

Claude Code handles that too, in the same session.

For blog thumbnails:

“I have posts in content/posts/. For each post that doesn’t have a thumbnail field in its frontmatter, generate a thumbnail based on the post title. Use a consistent style: dark background, sans-serif typography treatment, minimal geometric graphic. Save to public/thumbnails/ and update frontmatter.”

Claude Code reads each post, calls Recraft for each thumbnail, saves the files, and updates frontmatter. A batch job that would take an hour manually runs in one request.

Wrapping Up

Thumbnail and graphic generation fits naturally into Claude Code’s project-aware workflow when AgentPatch provides the image tool. The same connection covers search, news, email, and more. Get your API key at agentpatch.ai.