Vision

Vision (delegated image understanding)

You do not have native vision, but you can still see an image by running the bundled script, which sends the image to a configurable OpenAI-compatible vision model and returns a text answer.

When to use

Use this skill whenever a task requires understanding image content and you cannot view it directly, for example:

• The user uploads or points to an image / screenshot / photo and asks what's in it.
• You need to read text inside an image (OCR).
• You need to diagnose an error from a screenshot.
• You need to understand a UI mockup, diagram, chart, or scanned document.
• You need to compare what an image shows against code or expected output.

How to use

Run the script with the Bash tool. Pass the image (local path or http(s) URL) and a clear, specific instruction describing what you need to know:

python3 "$CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR/scripts/see.py"  "your question"

If $CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR is not set in your environment, use the relative path to this skill folder, e.g. python3 scripts/see.py ... from the skill directory, or the absolute path where the skill is installed.

Examples:

# Describe an image
python3 scripts/see.py ./photo.jpg "Describe this image in detail"

# OCR — extract text
python3 scripts/see.py ./receipt.png "Transcribe all text exactly, preserving layout"

# Diagnose an error screenshot
python3 scripts/see.py ./error.png "What error is shown and what is the likely cause?"

# Read a chart into structured data
python3 scripts/see.py ./chart.png "Extract every series, label, and value as a markdown table"

# Remote image
python3 scripts/see.py "https://example.com/diagram.png" "Explain this architecture diagram"

The script prints the model's answer to stdout. Read that answer and use it to continue the task. Ask a focused question rather than a generic describe when you need something specific (a value, a status, an error message) — you get better results and spend fewer tokens.

Configuration (required, set once)

The script reads its config from environment variables or a .claude/settings.json env block (same variable names as the vision-mcp-server MCP, so config carries over). Resolution order: an explicit environment variable wins; otherwise the script reads .claude/settings.json, searching from the current directory upward and then ~/.claude/.

Variable	Required	Example
VISION_BASE_URL	yes	http://localhost:1234/v1/chat/completions
VISION_MODEL	yes	Qwen3-VL-32B, gpt-4o, glm-4v, ...
VISION_API_KEY	no*	your API key (*optional for local servers)
VISION_MAX_TOKENS	no	4096
VISION_TEMPERATURE	no	0.2
VISION_DETAIL	no	auto | low | high
VISION_TIMEOUT	no	120

> VISION_BASE_URL must be the full chat-completions endpoint > (.../v1/chat/completions), not just the base URL.

Set them in your shell profile, or in the MCP/agent env block, or inline:

export VISION_BASE_URL=http://localhost:1234/v1/chat/completions
export VISION_MODEL=Qwen3-VL-32B
export VISION_API_KEY=sk-...        # optional for local

Or put them in .claude/settings.json (project-level, or global ~/.claude/):

{
  "env": {
    "VISION_BASE_URL": "http://localhost:1234/v1/chat/completions",
    "VISION_MODEL": "Qwen3-VL-32B",
    "VISION_API_KEY": "sk-..."
  }
}

Notes

• Pure Python standard library — no pip install needed.
• Local files are auto-converted to a base64 data URL; http(s) URLs are passed through.
• If the script reports a missing variable or an unreachable endpoint, fix the

config above and retry. Add --dry-run to inspect the request without sending it: python3 scripts/see.py --dry-run img.png "test".