Show HN: Artbucket – OSS brand assets and portals for humans and AI agents

Artbucket launched as an open-source brand asset management system that serves the same answers to people, AI agents and code through a web app, MCP server, REST API, CLI and Git. The tool exposes MCP tools named search_assets, check_use and rendition_url at /api/v1/mcp, letting agents like Claude Code check usage rights — for example refusing a Spring hero image for paid-social use in Germany because its license expired after 2026-03-12 — and fetch renditions such as /a/{id}/w_1200,f_webp. The full core is free to self-host on Postgres and an S3-compatible bucket with Node 22+, pnpm and Docker, with no telemetry and no locked features.

Your brand's source of truth, open source. Which logo is current? What colors should an agent use? Is this photo cleared for paid social in Germany? Artbucket keeps a brand's assets, rules, rights and releases together, and gives the same answer to people, AI agents and code. People read it in the web app and on portals, agents query it over MCP, code consumes it through the API, the CLI and Git. Web app · MCP · REST API · CLI · Git Try Artbucket Cloud https://artbucket.io · Live brand page https://brand.artbucket.io/ · Docs https://docs.artbucket.io · Run it yourself run-it-yourself Find the asset, ask whether it may run, get it at the size you need: bash $ npx artbucket search primary logo {id} logo-primary.svg logo primary $ npx artbucket check {spring-hero} --channel paid-social --territory DE refused Spring hero x Replaced by Summer hero x License expired after 2026-03-12 → Summer hero https://assets.example.com/a/{summer-hero} Its replacement $ npx artbucket url {id} --width 1200 --format webp https://assets.example.com/a/{id}/w 1200,f webp Agents make the same calls over MCP search assets , check use , rendition url , and code over the REST API https://docs.artbucket.io/developers/api /api/v1 , with an OpenAPI spec . The web app is a client of that API, with zero private endpoints, so everything it does, you can script. See May I use this? https://docs.artbucket.io/guides/check and the CLI https://docs.artbucket.io/developers/cli . /api/v1/mcp is an MCP server. Give the URL to any agent: it opens a consent screen where you pick what it may do Suggest, Read or Edit , and the agent gets a key bound to you, never more than you can do. claude mcp add --transport http artbucket https://app.artbucket.io/api/v1/mcp That is Artbucket Cloud https://artbucket.io ; on your own server, use its URL. Then ask: "Give me the approved logo for a dark background." The agent checks the use and gets the brand's dark-background variant, as a URL at the size it needs. The Claude Code plugin adds a skill that teaches the workflow brand rules first, a use check before publishing, provenance on anything generated : /plugin marketplace add pwnera/artbucket , then /plugin install artbucket@artbucket . Other agents: npx skills add pwnera/artbucket . See MCP https://docs.artbucket.io/developers/mcp . The whole core is here, free to self-host on Postgres and an S3-compatible bucket. Nothing held back, nothing to unlock, no telemetry. You need Node 22+, pnpm and Docker: git clone https://github.com/pwnera/artbucket.git cd artbucket pnpm install cp .env.example .env docker compose up -d Postgres and S3-compatible storage pnpm dev migrates the database, then serves Open http://localhost:3000 http://localhost:3000 and make the first account: it is the admin of everything. No Node on the machine? Set BETTER AUTH SECRET in .env openssl rand -base64 32 and run the published image with docker compose --profile app up -d . The quick start https://docs.artbucket.io/quickstart takes it from there. To put it on a server, follow the guide for Render https://docs.artbucket.io/installation/render , Docker Compose https://docs.artbucket.io/installation/docker-compose , Docker https://docs.artbucket.io/installation/docker , Fly https://docs.artbucket.io/installation/fly , Kubernetes https://docs.artbucket.io/installation/kubernetes , Coolify https://docs.artbucket.io/installation/coolify or a plain VPS https://docs.artbucket.io/installation/vps . Any S3-compatible storage works: AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, MinIO, Garage, SeaweedFS. - Assets: what exists. The library: search in milliseconds at 100,000 assets, and any size or format from one original as a URL, /a/{id}/w 1200,f webp , with no export and no duplicate. - Rules: how to use it. Colors, type, logo rules and don'ts as typed records with history, tied to the assets; guideline pages and design tokens are drawn from them. - Rights: where it may run. License, channels, territories, embargo and last day of use on each asset. Ask before it runs: yes, or why not and what to use instead. - Releases: what is current. Release the brand like software, pin a release, roll back. Portals and BrandHub show the release. - Access: who may use it. Grants down to one asset, so an agency sees its slice. Single sign-on in every install, and viewers are never counted. - Portals. A press kit, partner hub or retailer portal on your own domain, plus share and upload links for people without an account. - Review. Uploads, tags and agent suggestions wait for a person's yes. - Provenance. C2PA Content Credentials read on ingest and kept, IPTC/XMP written back into the file on download. Your files leave with their metadata. - Brand as code. The brand as YAML in a Git repository, changed on either side and merged a rule at a time brand as code https://docs.artbucket.io/guides/brand-as-code . - Insights. What gets used, by whom, on which release, counted without cookies. Read CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/pwnera/artbucket/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md first. Bug fixes go straight to a pull request; for anything larger, open an issue before writing the code, since the roadmap is opinionated on purpose. The load-bearing choices, and why, are in the decision records https://github.com/pwnera/artbucket/blob/main/docs/decisions/index.mdx . Built with Next.js, React, Postgres and Drizzle, sharp, better-auth and Tailwind. No monorepo, no job queue, no Redis, no search cluster. pnpm test pnpm typecheck pnpm lint Start with the documentation https://docs.artbucket.io . Questions and bugs go to GitHub issues https://github.com/pwnera/artbucket/issues , with the version you run, what you did and what you expected. Security reports never go in a public issue: see SECURITY.md https://github.com/pwnera/artbucket/blob/main/SECURITY.md . ROADMAP.md https://github.com/pwnera/artbucket/blob/main/ROADMAP.md has what shipped, what is in progress and what is deferred on purpose. Artbucket is at v1: /api/v1 and the MCP tools are frozen, and what works against them keeps working on every 1.x release stability https://docs.artbucket.io/developers/stability . AGPL-3.0 https://github.com/pwnera/artbucket/blob/main/LICENSE , copyright Pwnera SAS. Run it, change it, self-host it, for any purpose. If you offer a changed version as a network service, publish your changes. Building a product on Artbucket, or need your own terms? Pwnera SAS also licenses it commercially: open an issue https://github.com/pwnera/artbucket/issues and ask. ee/ is reserved for commercial code. See decision 0013 https://github.com/pwnera/artbucket/blob/main/docs/decisions/0013-agpl-and-cla.mdx .