Showing Image in Kitty Terminal

SkillFiles & storage

Show images in terminal using the Kitty image protocol. TRIGGER when show/view images in terminal, display plot results, or after saving any plot or image file to disk.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the Showing Image in Kitty Terminal skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by archibate/dotfiles-opencode in skills/show-image/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

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:

  1. User ask to view image in their terminal.
  2. 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

Signals

GitHub stars
106
Forks
21
Last commit
Apr 2026

ahel review

  • K6low
    bundled executables the agent is told to run

Automated review, not a security audit. Ruleset v1+k2.

Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
show-image
Source
github.com/archibate/dotfiles-opencode