gateway-client

name	gateway-client
description	Build clients that integrate with the IMG.LY AI Gateway (`gateway.img.ly`) — discovering models, generating images/video/audio/text, uploading inputs, and consuming the SSE response stream. Use whenever the user wants to call, integrate with, or build a client for the IMG.LY Gateway, or mentions `gateway.img.ly`, `IMG.LY Gateway`, IMG.LY AI generation, or an IMG.LY API key starting with `sk_`.

IMG.LY Gateway — Client Integration

You are helping a developer integrate with the IMG.LY AI Gateway. The gateway is a unified REST + SSE API that routes requests to AI providers for image, video, audio, and text generation. Clients only deal with one API — auth, billing, asset storage, and provider routing are handled server-side.

Always start by fetching the live integration guide

The gateway publishes a current, machine-readable integration reference at:

https://gateway.img.ly/llms.txt

Fetch this before answering specific questions about endpoints, request shapes, SSE event names, error codes, or available capabilities. The reference is updated as the gateway evolves and supersedes anything you may have learned from training data.

WebFetch https://gateway.img.ly/llms.txt

Use the live reference as the source of truth. The notes below are stable mental-model context that doesn't change with releases.

Mental model

• One endpoint for everything. All generation goes through POST /v1/responses. The request body shape varies by model type (media models take prompt + model-specific properties; text models take messages in OpenAI chat-completions format), but the route, auth, and response transport are uniform.
• All responses are SSE streams. Even for fast image models, the response is text/event-stream. Always parse as SSE — never try to read it as a single JSON body. Events: generation.status, generation.delta (streaming text), generation.completed, generation.failed.
• Inputs are schema-driven. Every model declares its input schema at GET /v1/models/schema?model=<id>. Use this to build forms or validate inputs — do not hardcode model-specific fields. The schema includes IMG.LY UI extensions (x-imgly-builder, x-imgly-enum-labels, x-imgly-enum-icons, x-property-order) that hint at how the parameter should be rendered.
• Model IDs are creator/model (e.g. bfl/flux-2, google/veo-3.1-fast). The catalog is dynamic — fetch GET /v1/models at runtime instead of hardcoding model lists.
• Output URLs are gateway-hosted. generation.completed events contain URLs under gateway.img.ly/v1/assets/.... They redirect to short-lived signed URLs and don't require authentication.

Two auth methods — pick the right one

Method	When to use	Header
API key (sk_...)	Server-side code; never in browsers	Authorization: Bearer sk_live_...
Gateway JWT	Browser/client code. Mint via POST /v1/tokens from your backend (5–15 min TTL)	Authorization: Bearer eyJ...

For apps with a browser frontend, the JWT mint flow is the recommended pattern: keep the API key server-side, mint short-lived tokens for the browser, refresh on expiry. The full flow with code is in the live reference (Example 2).

For server-to-server attribution, set X-End-User-Id: <your-user-id> alongside the API key.

Common decision points

"What models can I use?" → GET /v1/models. Filter with ?capability=text2image|image2image|text2video|image2video|text2speech|text2text. Group with ?groupBy=capability.

"How do I build a UI for this model's options?" → GET /v1/models/schema?model=<id>. Render the input_schema.properties in x-property-order, using x-imgly-builder hints for component selection and x-imgly-enum-labels/x-imgly-enum-icons for enum presentation.

"How do I send an input image?" → POST /v1/uploads to get a presigned URL → PUT the image bytes directly to that URL → use the returned asset_url in the image_urls field of your generation request.

"My fetch hangs / I don't see the result." → You're probably reading the response as JSON. It's SSE — you must read the body as a stream and parse event: / data: frames split by \n\n. The reference has a reusable readGatewaySSE helper.

"How do I handle credits / billing?" → Don't manage them client-side. The gateway accounts for credits automatically. Just handle a 402 insufficient_credits error gracefully (prompt the user to top up).

"Video is slow." → Expected. Video generations emit multiple generation.status events (often 30s–5min) before generation.completed. Show progress from data.progress if present.

Key gotchas

1. Always parse as SSE. Even for sub-second generations.
2. Tokens expire fast. Cache them but refresh before exp. Don't reuse a JWT across requests after it expires — the gateway returns 401.
3. Image-to-image models require image_urls. Upload via /v1/uploads first if you have local files; you cannot send raw bytes to /v1/responses.
4. Don't hardcode model lists or schemas. Both are dynamic. Build your UI to read from /v1/models and /v1/models/schema.
5. Errors are structured JSON. { "error": { "code": "...", "message": "..." } } — not plain text. Read error.code to drive retry/UI logic.
6. Output URLs are stable handles. They redirect to short-lived signed URLs internally, but the URL you receive in generation.completed is the one to keep — it stays valid.

When the user wants code

After fetching the live reference, prefer adapting the examples already in llms.txt (server-side API key, client-side JWT flow, image-to-image with upload, video, text streaming, schema-driven UI). Match the user's language/framework. The SSE parser is the most error-prone part — use the readGatewaySSE helper from the reference rather than rewriting the loop.

What this skill does NOT cover

• Provisioning API keys, billing, account setup → those happen in the IMG.LY dashboard.
• Internal gateway architecture and operations → not relevant to client integration.
• Building/extending the gateway itself → unrelated; this skill is for consumers of the gateway.