Let Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor Compress Images with PiPic

PiPic has released a Skill that lets coding agents such as Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor compress images directly from natural language commands. The Skill wraps the PiPic CLI, which calls a hosted compression service for PNG, JPEG, WebP, and AVIF files, and returns structured JSON results that agents can interpret reliably. The setup includes a one-time installation and login, after which agents can compress images in place or to a separate directory, with explicit handling of skipped and failed files.

Your coding agent can run a build and edit the code that ships it. Image compression often ends with a tool installation, a throwaway script and output the agent cannot interpret reliably. PiPic uses a two-part setup instead: @pipic/cli performs the image compression.PiPic is not an AI compression model. The agent operates the tool; the hosted PiPic service compresses PNG, JPEG, WebP and AVIF files. Run the setup yourself once: npm i -g @pipic/cli pipic login npx skills add PiPic-cc/pipic-cli -g \ -a claude-code \ -a codex \ -a cursor \ -y The short form below asks which supported agents should receive the Skill: npx skills add PiPic-cc/pipic-cli -g The Skill source is public in the PiPic CLI repository https://github.com/PiPic-cc/pipic-cli/blob/main/skills/pipic/SKILL.md . After setup, the task does not need a product name or flags: Compress the images in ./assets in place. The Skill matches image compression, shrinking and optimisation requests. It checks that pipic exists and that the machine is signed in. “In place” gives it an explicit destination, so the agent runs: pipic ./assets --replace --json To preserve the originals, ask for a separate output directory. The agent then uses: pipic ./assets -o ./compressed --json --replace and -o are mutually exclusive, and one is required. PiPic exits with a usage error before uploading anything when the destination is missing. With --json , stdout contains one NDJSON object per file: {"file":"assets/hero.png","status":"ok","before":2316198,"after":723577,"saved":1592621} Those byte counts come from a published PiPic Agent CLI 1.0.6 benchmark run over a licensed PNG. They demonstrate the output shape; results vary by image. Every row has file , status , before , after and saved . Skipped and failed rows also include error . status is always one of: ok : a smaller result was written. skipped : the original stayed in place, often because the result was larger. error : the file failed and may need attention.The Skill explicitly teaches the agent that skipped is not a failure. Without that rule, an agent can report an already-optimised image as broken. | Code | Meaning | What the agent does | |---|---|---| | 0 | Everything succeeded | Summarises the rows and stops | | 1 | Some files failed | Re-runs only paths with status: "error" | | 2 | Usage error | Fixes the command instead of repeating it | | 3 | Sign-in required | Stops and asks the user to sign in | | 4 | Monthly allowance exhausted | Stops; a retry cannot help | Retry scope matters because every accepted file uses monthly allowance. If two files fail in a 100-file directory, re-running the entire directory uploads the other 98 again. The Skill tells the agent to retry only the two failed paths. It also tells the agent never to run pipic login . That command opens a browser or waits for device-code approval. A coding agent cannot provide the human approval and should stop instead of waiting for a timeout. PiPic Skill is an instruction file. It does not contain an encoder or transport image bytes. The CLI resolves files, calls the hosted compression service, writes smaller output atomically and returns structured results. The remote MCP endpoint is separate and read-only. It helps agents discover the CLI and HTTP API; images do not move through JSON-RPC. CLI images leave the machine for processing and are deleted from the server as soon as compression completes. Teams that require local-only processing should choose a local encoder. PiPic CLI and API offer 100 images per month on Free and 5,000 on Pro; the browser compressor remains free, unlimited and account-free. Full contract: PiPic Agent CLI documentation https://pipic.cc/cli