Illo

illo

Generate original print-style editorial illustrations for articles and blogs, starring a recurring mascot that performs each idea. Each character pack carries one of ten bundled looks (riso, blueprint, woodcut, pixel, clay, manila, chalk, phosphor, enamel, gouache) or a custom style — default Blot (a deadpan ink-drop), or design your own with the built-in character builder. One-metaphor-per-image scenes with named + custom + derived palettes and reference-image character consistency. Renders through two backends: your Codex CLI (gpt-image-2 on your Codex subscription — free for subscribers, no API key) when one is installed and logged in, or OpenRouter (model-selectable: Grok Imagine, Nano Banana 2/Pro, GPT-5.4 Image 2, …) as the universal fallback.

Hand it "we replatform with zero downtime" and you get the bridge being rebuilt under live traffic:

🌐 illo-skill.com — live examples, the character gallery, and copy-paste installs.

The skill itself lives in skills/illo/ — its README is the full developer reference (prerequisites, API-key setup, models & cost, everything below in detail).

Same idea, different voice — four of the ten bundled looks:

riso — the house default	clay — stop-motion plasticine
phosphor — CRT trace on glass	blueprint — draftsman linework

Install

Quick install — any agent. One command for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Gemini CLI, and the ~70 other runtimes the skills CLI supports (update later with npx skills update):

npx skills add tmchow/illo-skill --skill illo

Platform-native installs. The repo also ships a plugin/extension manifest for each major runtime, so you can install through your platform's own package manager and get managed updates:

Platform	Install	Update
Claude Code	/plugin marketplace add tmchow/illo-skill then /plugin install illo@illo-skill	claude plugin update illo, or enable marketplace auto-update
Codex	codex plugin marketplace add tmchow/illo-skill then codex plugin add illo@illo-skill	codex plugin marketplace upgrade
Gemini CLI	gemini extensions install https://github.com/tmchow/illo-skill	gemini extensions update illo
Copilot / GitHub CLI	gh skill install tmchow/illo-skill illo (cross-agent via --agent)	gh skill update illo
Cursor	npx skills add tmchow/illo-skill --skill illo (Cursor Marketplace listing pending review)	re-run the installer
Hermes	hermes skills install tmchow/illo-skill/illo	hermes skills update illo
OpenClaw	openclaw skills install illo	reinstall with the same command

Every lane installs the same skill; releases are tagged v<version> and the version in every manifest is kept in lockstep with skills/illo/SKILL.md by CI.

Repo layout

The skill sits in skills/illo/, following the layout of the canonical skill repos (anthropics/skills, openai/skills): a top-level skills/ folder, one directory per skill. It is deliberately not at the repo root — installers copy the entire skill directory verbatim, so the skill dir holds only what every install should ship. Docs-only images live in _assets/illo/ (linked by raw URL), and repo meta stays at the root — including the plugin manifests (.claude-plugin/, .codex-plugin/, .cursor-plugin/, gemini-extension.json) that make the repo installable as a native plugin on each platform.

Companion repos

• tmchow/illo-characters — community character packs ("install the blip character").

Provenance

illo started life inside tmchow/agent-skills; it moved here with full git history. The old location keeps a frozen copy so existing installs don't break, but this repo is the canonical home — new versions ship only from here.

License