| name | polli |
| description | Generate images, text, audio, video, and transcribe speech via the Pollinations API using the polli CLI. Use when asked to generate media, call pollinations.ai, check pollen balance, list models, manage API keys, inspect quests, manage agents or my-models, or run polli commands. |
| allowed-tools | Bash(polli *) |
polli — Pollinations CLI
Thin wrapper around gen.pollinations.ai. Generates images, text, audio, video; transcribes speech; manages API keys, usage, quests, agents, and invite-only my-models.
If polli is not installed, run npm i -g @pollinations/cli@latest (provides the polli binary).
When to use this skill
- User asks to generate an image / text / audio / video via pollinations
- User mentions polli, pollinations, pollen, pollinations.ai
- User wants to transcribe speech or run TTS
- User asks about their pollen balance, usage, or API keys
- User wants to browse or filter available models
- User wants to inspect quests or manage invite-only my-models
- User wants to create or update a hosted prompt agent
Quick reference
| Intent | Command |
|---|
| Log in once | polli auth login |
| Store an existing key | printf '%s' "$POLLINATIONS_API_KEY" | polli auth login --with-token |
| Generate image | polli gen image "<prompt>" --output out.png |
| Generate text | polli gen text "<prompt>" |
| Text with stdin as context | echo "<ctx>" | polli gen text "<question>" |
| Describe an image (vision) | polli gen text "what is this?" --image <url> |
| One-shot TTS | polli gen audio "<text>" --output speech.mp3 |
| Speak out loud | polli gen audio "<text>" --play (uses afplay on macOS; ffplay/mpv/mpg123 on Linux) |
| Generate video | polli gen video "<prompt>" --output out.mp4 |
| Transcribe audio | polli gen transcribe path/to.mp3 |
| Upload a local file | polli upload path/to.png (prints public URL) |
| List all models | polli models |
| Filter models by type | polli models --type image |
| Model health + latency | polli models --stats (default 60m, --window <min>) |
| Check balance | polli usage |
| Developer earnings | polli earnings (--days <n>, max 90) |
| List your quests + claim state | polli quests (filters: --open --claimable --claimed --coming-soon) |
| Manage prompt agents | polli agents list |
| Manage invite-only community models | polli my-models list |
| Connect a coding harness to Pollinations | polli harness dsh on (available adapters: polli harness --help) |
| Machine-readable output | append --json to any command |
Setup
One-time: polli auth login (device-flow; creates a key with profile, usage, and keys). To store an existing key, run
printf '%s' "$POLLINATIONS_API_KEY" | polli auth login --with-token. Verify
with polli auth status.
Override the stored key for a single command with --key <key>.
Recipes
Generate an image to a file
polli gen image "a fox reading a book, studio ghibli style" --output fox.png
Defaults: zimage, 1024x1024. Pick a different model with --model flux (see polli models --type image). For edits / img2img, pass one or more --image <url> flags — must be public http(s) URLs, local paths are rejected client-side. Only models that list "image" in input_modalities actually consume the flag — flux and zimage are text-only and will silently ignore --image. Find i2i-capable models with polli models --type image --json | jq -r '.[] | select(.input_modalities | contains(["image"])) | .name' (common choices: nanobanana, kontext, p-image-edit). To use a local file, upload it first with polli upload (see next recipe).
Upload a local file to get a public URL
URL=$(polli upload cat.png)
polli gen image "make the cat purple" --image "$URL" --output purple.png
polli upload <file> posts a multipart upload to media.pollinations.ai (100MB max; 30-day lifecycle, refreshed by GETs once the object is at least 15 days old). Each upload receives a unique id. Human mode: URL on stdout and id/size/contentType on stderr. --json: full upload response on stdout. The returned URL is public (no auth to fetch) and works anywhere --image is accepted — gen image, gen video, etc.
Generate text
polli gen text "summarize the three laws of robotics"
Save to file: --output summary.txt. Use --system "<msg>" to set system prompt. For reasoning models, pass --reasoning low|medium|high to control reasoning effort. Only send --reasoning to models where reasoning: true in polli models --type text --json — the flag is not validated client-side, and non-reasoning models may silently accept it (openai), ignore it, or return a 400 (mistral).
Describe an image with a vision model
URL=$(polli upload selfie.jpg)
polli gen text "turn this person into a cartoon pet in one playful sentence" --image "$URL"
gen text --image <url...> attaches one or more public https URLs as an OpenAI-style multimodal message — repeatable for multi-image prompts. Local paths aren't supported; run them through polli upload first (see the upload recipe above). Only text models with "image" in input_modalities actually read the image — filter with polli models --type text --json | jq -r '.[] | select(.input_modalities | index("image")) | .name'. Non-vision models silently ignore the attachment. Good defaults: openai, gemini, claude.
Pipe stdin as context into text generation
cat README.md | polli gen text "what does this project do?"
stdin becomes context; the positional argument is the question.
Interactive chat session
polli gen chat --model openai --system "you are a terse assistant"
Slash commands inside the session: /exit, /clear, /save <path>.
Text-to-speech
polli gen audio "hello world" --voice nova --output hello.mp3
echo "long script" | polli gen audio --voice nova --output out.mp3
Default voice is sage. To discover the full live voice list, use the model registry: polli models --type audio --json | jq -r '.[].voices[]?' — each audio model entry includes its voices[] array. Format defaults to mp3; --format opus|aac|flac|wav to change. Accepts stdin (same as gen text). Add --play to save and then play the audio back (handy for narration/demos). Playback starts after the file is fully written, and the command blocks until playback finishes — if you want fire-and-forget, wrap in a subshell: ( polli gen audio "..." --play & ). Player on macOS: afplay; on Linux it tries ffplay, then mpv, then mpg123 in that order.
Generate music (elevenmusic)
polli gen audio "lofi hip-hop beat" --model elevenmusic --duration 30 --instrumental --output track.mp3
Generate sound effects (eleven-sfx)
polli gen audio "thunderclap with heavy rain" --model eleven-sfx --duration 5 --output thunder.mp3
Text-to-sound-effect via ElevenLabs (aliases: sfx, sound-effects). --duration 0.5–30s (omit to let the model pick). Billed per second of output (~$0.004/s, capped at $0.12 for a full 30s).
Multilingual TTS (eleven-multilingual-v2)
polli gen audio "Bonjour, ceci est un test" --model multilingual-v2 --voice rachel --output fr.mp3
Stable, lifelike TTS across 29 languages (aliases: multilingual-v2, eleven-v2) — a non-alpha alternative to the default v3.
Generate video
polli gen video "a spacecraft landing on mars" --model wan-fast --duration 5 --output mars.mp4
Cheapest path: --model wan-fast at ~$0.01/sec, fixed 5-second output (any --duration value is ignored — you always pay for and receive 5 sec). For image-to-video, pass --image <url> with a public HTTPS URL (local file paths and 404/rate-limited hosts will fail with a server error).
Flag support varies per model and is not enforced client-side. --duration, --aspect-ratio, and --audio are forwarded to the server but may be silently ignored — verified on wan-fast where duration is locked to 5s, --aspect-ratio 9:16 still returns 16:9, and --audio produces no audio track. Always inspect the output (file, ffprobe) before trusting a flag worked. Check polli models --type video --json for per-model capabilities.
Video is not tracked by --stats. polli models --type video --stats returns empty — the stats pipe only records text/image/audio events. To compare video models, fall back to polli models --type video --json and look at price/description fields.
Transcribe audio to text
polli gen transcribe recording.mp3 --language en
Models: whisper (default), scribe, universal-2, universal-3.5-pro. Accepts common audio formats (mp3, wav, m4a, flac, ogg); non-audio input (e.g. a .txt file) returns a clear 400 invalid_request_error: extension "txt" not supported — no need to pre-validate with file. Default output is the plain transcript on stdout as a single line (pipe-friendly). Use --json for structured output: whisper and AssemblyAI return timing data when requested through the API; scribe returns only {text: "..."} — use whisper or AssemblyAI if you need timing data. --language <ISO-639-1> (e.g. en, fr) is an optional hint that can improve accuracy for non-English or accented speech.
Discover models
polli models --type text
polli models --type image --verbose
polli models --stats
polli models --stats --window 5
Use --stats before choosing a model. Caveat: the err% column counts 5xx only — a model can show 0.0% while having massive 4xx rates (auth, validation, etc.). For the full picture use --stats --json and read errors_4xx, errors_5xx, latency_p95_ms.
Pricing fields are per-token, not per-request. completionImageTokens: 0.000008 means each output image-token costs that much — a single 1024x1024 image from gptimage lands at ~$0.008, not $0.000008. Flat-priced image models (flux, zimage) expose completionImageTokens as the whole-image price because they emit exactly one "token" per image. When in doubt, make one call and read the true cost from polli usage --history --limit 5 --json.
Check usage and balance
polli usage
polli usage --history
polli usage --daily
polli earnings
polli earnings --days 7
polli quests
polli quests --claimable
History is eventually consistent — a request you just made may not appear for 30–60s. When matching costs to freshly-generated media, use --limit 50 and filter by timestamp, and retry if the expected entry is missing. polli usage --json returns {"pollen": <number>} — the current balance only; use --history --json or --daily --json for cost breakdowns.
Manage my-models
polli my-models list
polli my-models models --base-url https://api.example.com/v1 --bearer-token "$UPSTREAM_KEY"
polli my-models create --name my-model --title "My Model" --base-url https://api.example.com/v1 --bearer-token "$UPSTREAM_KEY" --upstream-model gpt-4.1-mini
polli my-models create --name my-image --title "My Image" --modality image --image-pricing request --completion-image-price 0.01 --base-url https://api.example.com/v1 --bearer-token "$UPSTREAM_KEY" --upstream-model flux
polli my-models update <id> --description "Updated description"
polli my-models update <id> --paid-only
polli my-models delete <id>
my-models manages owned community text, image, and transcription models. Any account can create private models; communityEndpointsAllowed: true is required only to publish them. API keys require account:keys. Use account:usage for narrow read-only usage and polli quests; use both permissions when a client needs both read-only account state and admin operations. Quest claiming is dashboard-only; polli quests is read-only and account-aware.
Register an image my-model
polli my-models test --modality image --base-url https://api.example.com/v1 --bearer-token "$UPSTREAM_KEY" --model image-v1
polli my-models create --name my-image --title "My Image" --modality image --image-pricing request --completion-image-price 0.01 --input-modalities text,image --base-url https://api.example.com/v1 --bearer-token "$UPSTREAM_KEY" --upstream-model image-v1
Test before creating. The probe reports the pricing mode it detected and the input modalities it found, including whether the endpoint accepts image edits; pass those back as --input-modalities text,image to advertise edit support. polli my-models list shows them in the inputs column.
Two billing modes: --image-pricing request charges --completion-image-price per generated image, while --image-pricing tokens bills returned token usage per 1M through --prompt-text-price, --prompt-image-price, and --completion-image-price.
Prices only apply to --visibility public models. A private model is owner-only and always free, so every price flag above is stored as 0 until you publish — and making a published model private clears its prices again.
--modality is fixed at creation — update cannot change it.
Manage agents
polli agents list
polli agents get <id>
polli agents create --config agent.json --name my-agent --title "My Agent"
polli agents update <id> --config agent.json
polli agents delete <id>
The config file contains systemPrompt, baseModel, and optional mcpServers; create also requires --name and --title for the callable model listing. The only supported server ID is currently "pollinations". Updates replace the complete agent configuration.
Creating an agent also creates its callable model listing. Managed agents are text-only and free, with no fallbacks or per-user RPM. Deleting the agent also deletes its model listing. See Publish an Agent.
Manage API keys
polli keys list
polli keys info
polli keys create --name "my-bot" --type secret --budget 1000 --permissions profile usage
polli keys create --name "my-app" --type publishable --redirect-uri https://app.example/callback --earnings
polli keys revoke <id>
--permissions <perms...> scopes what the new key can do on the account (e.g. profile usage lets it call polli --key <new> usage). Without --permissions, new scoped keys can generate media but cannot read account state — polli --key <new> usage will 403. "keys" is auto-stripped from the list so a scoped key can never mint further keys. Existing keys with account:keys can manage my-models where that invite-only feature is enabled, but still need account:usage for read-only account state. Publishable app keys default developer earnings off; pass --earnings to enable them. To inspect a specific key other than the current one, use polli keys list --json | jq '.[] | select(.id == "<id>")'. keys info is intentionally scoped to the caller's own key.
Connect a coding harness
polli harness --help
polli harness dsh on
polli harness dsh on --model kimi
polli harness dsh on --no-mcp
polli harness dsh off
The DSH adapter globally configures the Pollinations provider, hosted Pollinations MCP, and this skill under $DSH_HOME (default ~/.dsh). It stores one dedicated child key in $DSH_HOME/.env for the provider and MCP, plus a private snapshot under ~/.pollinations/harnesses/. Reruns reuse a valid key already in the harness config. Other adapters may use their harness's official plugin or installer instead. Guide: polli docs section "Coding Harnesses".
Read API docs
polli docs
polli docs /v1/chat/completions
polli docs --open
Output contract
- Default (human mode): varies by command — most emit
key: value pairs or tab-separated tables with a header row. Exceptions: gen text prints the full response to stdout; gen transcribe prints the transcript as plain text; gen chat runs an interactive REPL. Status/progress messages go to stderr, so pipes stay clean.
--json: every command emits machine-parseable JSON to stdout; all human messages go to stderr. Always prefer --json when piping into jq or parsing — it's the only shape with a stable contract.- Exit codes: 0 on success, non-zero on auth failure, rate limit, network error, or invalid args. Error messages go to stderr.
Agent operating rules
- Run
polli auth status first if you don't know whether the user is logged in. Fail fast with a clear "run polli auth login" message if not.
- Prefer
--json whenever you'll parse the output. Never grep human-formatted tables.
- Don't hardcode model IDs. Fetch the live list with
polli models --type <type>. Model availability changes.
- Before picking a model for production use, check
polli models --stats. Rule of thumb for "healthy": err% ≤ 5, avg latency in a reasonable range for the modality (standard text <5s, image <10s, video <60s), and requests high enough to be statistically meaningful (ignore rows with <10 requests — noise). Filter by capability first, then optimize by health — e.g. for a reasoning task, narrow to models where reasoning: true (via polli models --type text --json), then cross-reference against --stats output. The healthiest model overall may not support the capability you need. Reasoning models are inherently slower — expect 5–50s, not <5s; when picking among them, prioritize low err% and request count over raw latency, and compare latency only within the reasoning-capable subset.
- Always pass
--output <path> for gen image, gen audio, gen video — otherwise the file lands in the current directory with a default name.
- For stdin-as-context on
gen text, pipe the context and pass the question as the positional argument: cat file | polli gen text "question about the file".
- For exact flag lists, run
polli <cmd> --help or polli gen <cmd> --help. This skill's recipes cover the common path; the CLI's own help is always the source of truth.
- Use
polli docs [endpoint] over guessing API shapes. It prints the canonical llm.txt reference from the live API.
Common pitfalls
- Forgetting
--output on binary generators (image/audio/video) — the file goes to a default path, which may not be what the user wants.
- Using
polli gen text --json expecting OpenAI chat-completions shape — the CLI's --json wraps its own structure. Use polli docs /v1/chat/completions to see the raw API shape if you need it.
- Running commands without auth —
polli auth status tells you who you're logged in as and your balance in one call.
gen text streams to a TTY, buffers when piped. The default now auto-detects — a human at the terminal sees tokens tick in, a pipe/redirect gets the full response once. Force either mode with --stream or --no-stream. For scripts and chains like polli gen text … | polli gen audio …, you don't need to do anything; buffering happens automatically.- Translating a
polli workflow into a browser app. gen.pollinations.ai requires a bearer token for generation requests, so a plain client-side fetch with no auth returns 401 unless it is served from cache. Mint a scoped key with polli keys create and proxy via your own backend.
