Image Attachments

June 21, 2026 · View on GitHub

Nanocoder can send images alongside your text so a vision-capable model can look at a screenshot, a diagram, or a design mockup. Attachments are gathered as you compose a message and sent with the next prompt you submit.

Attaching an Image

There are three ways to attach an image:

MethodHow
Clipboard pasteCopy an image, then press Ctrl+V in the input
Drag and dropDrag an image file into the terminal
File pathType or paste a path to an image file

For drag-and-drop and typed paths, the path can be quoted, unquoted, or backslash-escaped. macOS terminals drop a dragged screenshot in as an unquoted path with escaped spaces (e.g. Screenshot\ 2026-06-21\ at\ 10.04.32.png) — that form is recognised without you needing to add quotes. The image reference is stripped from your message text before it's sent, so the model receives the picture rather than a file path.

Remote http(s):// URLs that end in an image extension are left as plain text — they are not fetched or treated as local files.

Managing Attachments

Pending attachments are listed just above the input box:

[image #1: Screenshot 2026-06-21.png] [image #2: clipboard] · ctrl-x remove last
  • Ctrl+X removes the most recently added attachment.
  • Attachments are cleared once the message is submitted.

Supported Formats

PNG, JPEG, GIF, and WebP are accepted (.png, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .webp). Each image must be 10 MB or smaller; larger files are skipped.

Whether the image is actually understood depends on the model — attach images only when your provider/model supports vision. If a model can't accept images, it will report or error on its own.

Clipboard Requirements by Platform

Clipboard paste (Ctrl+V) shells out to a platform tool to read the image. If the tool isn't installed, the paste is a no-op and a one-line note is written to the debug log naming the missing command.

PlatformRequired tool
macOSosascript (built in)
Linux (Wayland)wl-paste
Linux (X11)xclip
WindowsPowerShell

On a minimal Linux container without wl-paste or xclip — common in dev containers and CI — clipboard paste won't work; attach by drag-and-drop or file path instead, or install one of the tools.

See Also