Art

Art for a studio's game

Build time, never a frame of play. Everything here happens once, before anybody plays, and costs nothing at runtime: never call an image model from a game's loop or from anything a person waits on. If you want one there, you want a baked asset instead.

One script: scripts/art.mjs in this skill's folder (Claude Code: node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/art/scripts/art.mjs" <command>), from inside the studio. Node 22, ffmpeg and Chrome; --json on every command. Art jobs live in art/<slug>/ (the images, the budget.json, the .request and .json receipts beside each generated file); every paid call is also a line in art/receipts.jsonl.

node <art.mjs> check      # ffmpeg, Chrome, the studio; the fal key checked for free (only generated images need it)

1. The cover, first, always

The cover is what a stranger sees before pressing anything: the studio's game page, the directory card, a link preview. Start from the game itself:

npm run dev                                                       # background task
node <art.mjs> frame <game> --url http://127.0.0.1:8787           # frames of the big screen playing, the busiest picked
node <art.mjs> cover <game> --from art/frames/frame-04.png [--focus 0.6,0.4]

frame films the game's big screen (bots playing in a live room) with the platform's own furniture hidden (the join QR, the status chip, result cards) and keeps the frame with the most visible detail. cover crops it to 16:9 around the focus, writes cover.jpg (1600x900, under 400 KB) into the game and names it in game.json ("cover": "cover.jpg"): the site and the directory use it until the game's landing has a still of its own (hero/wide.jpg), which then is its picture everywhere.

Open the cover and look. A cover is a picture of the GAME: no QR code, no share panel, no debug text, not the waiting screen (a picture of nothing happening). Dark or featureless frames get a warning: a black card on a page reads as a black box.

A painted cover from that frame, when the person wants one (paid, below): write the prompt from the game you just played, never from its title. Describe what is on screen: the palette, the time of day, what the player is doing, the shapes. A cover that promises something the game does not contain is the one failure here that matters: a person presses Play expecting that picture and meets something else. Use the real frame as the image reference ("@file:art/frames/frame-04.png" in the input) so the painting keeps the game's layout.

2. Paid images: price, budget, one call at a time

Generated images come from fal through the person's own account: they create a key at https://fal.ai/dashboard/keys and set FAL_KEY in the environment your AI runs in (never pasted into the chat, never written into the studio). fal's own MCP server is how you find a model and read its input schema and price (search_models, recommend_model, get_model_schema, get_pricing): use it rather than memory, because endpoints retire and reprice. Not connected? Offer it, and the person signs in on fal's own page (no key): in Claude Code claude mcp add --transport http --scope user fal https://mcp.fal.ai/mcp-relay, then /mcp; in Codex codex mcp add fal --url https://mcp.fal.ai/mcp-relay, then codex mcp login fal. Paid calls go through art.mjs gen, never the MCP's run_model or submit_job: gen prices, caps, receipts and resumes; the MCP's run does none of that (the Homie mod in Claude Code, and Homie's hooks in Codex, hold one as a call whose cost cannot be read first).

node <art.mjs> price --model fal-ai/flux/dev --input art/cover/input.json    # free: fal's unit price x this input
node <art.mjs> budget cover --cap <dollars the person agreed to>
node <art.mjs> gen cover --model fal-ai/flux/dev --input art/cover/input.json --out cover-painted.jpg --dry-run
node <art.mjs> gen cover --model fal-ai/flux/dev --input art/cover/input.json --out cover-painted.jpg --yes

• Tell the person the price and ask for a cap before the first call. gen refuses with no budget, refuses past the cap, and asks again without --yes.
• The receipt is written the moment fal accepts the job. Running the same gen again resumes it from <out>.request: it never pays twice. A cut-off call is resumed, not re-sent.
• Never run paid generation in a loop to "try until it is good". Look at what came back, change the prompt, run it once more. Spend the riskiest image first.
• No real people, no real brands, no copyrighted characters, no "in the style of" a living artist, in prompts or references.
• Every prompt starts from the game's derived style prompt (homie-studio style prompt <id>: medium, shape, palette hexes, light, framing; computed from the decisions, never edited by hand) and uses the golden images as references on a multi-reference model. A picture made under an older palette is listed stale when the palette changes (the style skill's blast radius).
• What the provider's terms say about the pictures, with read dates: references/RIGHTS.md. Read the live page again before anything commercial is published.
• 3D models (props, characters) are the models skill's; mood images for the style board are too (models.mjs mood).