picsum-cli

picsum

A command line for Lorem Picsum — random high-quality placeholder images with metadata.

picsum is a single pure-Go binary. It reads public Lorem Picsum data over plain HTTPS, shapes it into clean records, and prints output that pipes into the rest of your tools. No API key, nothing to run alongside it.

The same package is also a resource-URI driver, so a host program like ant can address picsum as picsum:// URIs.

Install

go install github.com/tamnd/picsum-cli/cmd/picsum@latest

Or grab a prebuilt binary from the releases, or run the container image:

docker run --rm ghcr.io/tamnd/picsum:latest --help

Usage

picsum list                        # list all images (20 per page)
picsum list --page 2 --limit 5    # page 2, 5 per page
picsum image 42                    # get info about image #42
picsum image 0 -o json             # as JSON, ready for jq
picsum --help                      # the whole command tree

Every command shares one output contract: -o table|json|jsonl|csv|tsv|url|raw, --fields to pick columns, --template for a custom line, and -n to limit. The default adapts to where output goes (a table on a terminal, JSONL in a pipe), so the same command reads well by hand and parses cleanly downstream.

Serve it

The same operations are available over HTTP and as an MCP tool set for agents, with no extra code:

picsum serve --addr :7777    # GET /v1/list and /v1/image/<id>  return NDJSON
picsum mcp                   # speak MCP over stdio

Use it as a resource-URI driver

picsum registers a picsum domain the way a program registers a database driver with database/sql. A host enables it with one blank import:

import _ "github.com/tamnd/picsum-cli/picsum"

Then ant (or any program that links the package) dereferences picsum:// URIs without knowing anything about picsum:

ant get picsum://image/42    # fetch image #42 metadata
ant url picsum://image/42    # the live https URL

Development

cmd/picsum/   thin main: hands cli.NewApp to kit.Run
cli/          assembles the kit App from the picsum domain
picsum/       the library: HTTP client, data models, and domain.go (the driver)
docs/         tago documentation site

make build      # ./bin/picsum
make test       # go test ./...
make vet        # go vet ./...

Releasing

Push a version tag and GitHub Actions runs GoReleaser, which builds the archives, Linux packages, the multi-arch GHCR image, checksums, SBOMs, and a cosign signature:

git tag v0.1.0
git push --tags

The Homebrew and Scoop steps self-disable until their tokens exist, so the first release works with no extra secrets.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.