Image Attachments
You can attach images directly to chat messages — drag and drop, paste from your clipboard, or use the attachment button in the composer. Pinchy takes care of the rest.
What you can send
Section titled “What you can send”| Format | Status |
|---|---|
| JPEG | Sent as-is when small, re-encoded to WebP when large |
| PNG | Always re-encoded to WebP (PNG → WebP usually shrinks 50–90%) |
| WebP | Sent as-is when small, re-encoded to fit when large |
| HEIC | Convert to JPEG or PNG first — your phone’s share sheet can do this |
| Others | Convert to JPEG, PNG, or WebP first |
Up to 15 MB per image. If a file exceeds that, you’ll see “Image exceeds the 15 MB size limit” in the composer — no message is sent.
What happens automatically
Section titled “What happens automatically”Modern smartphone photos are often 5–12 MB. To make sure your agent’s vision model actually sees them, Pinchy resizes and re-encodes large images to WebP under 1.9 MB before sending inline. The original quality looks identical for chat-sized viewing, but the file fits in the model’s inline image budget. No setting required — it just happens.
You can verify the conversion worked: the agent’s response should reference what’s actually in the picture. If the agent answers as if no image was attached, see “Troubleshooting” below.
Two paths, one upload
Section titled “Two paths, one upload”Each image you attach travels two routes simultaneously:
- Inline to the model — the resized version is sent with the message itself, so a vision-capable model can “see” the image immediately without an extra step.
- Saved to the agent’s workspace — the original file lands in
uploads/<filename>so the agent can re-read it later (e.g. when you ask follow-up questions about details, or when a sub-agent needs the full-resolution version).
Most of the time you don’t need to think about this — the agent picks the right path. The workspace copy matters mainly for shared agents, where it’s visible to anyone with access to the agent.
When something goes wrong
Section titled “When something goes wrong”| You see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| ”Couldn’t process this image format” | The image is in a format Pinchy can’t re-encode (e.g. HEIC) and is too large. | Convert it to JPEG or PNG and try again. |
| ”Image too large” | The encoded message exceeded the WebSocket frame limit. | Use a smaller image, or crop before attaching. |
| Agent ignores the image entirely | The model you’re using doesn’t support vision. | Switch to a vision-capable model in the agent’s settings. |
Vision support by model
Section titled “Vision support by model”Whether the agent can actually see an image depends on the underlying LLM. As of today:
- OpenAI GPT-4o and newer — full vision support
- Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet and newer — full vision support
- Google Gemini Pro/Flash — full vision support
- Local Ollama — only models marked as vision-capable (e.g.
llama3.2-vision,gemma3)
If you attach an image to a text-only model, the model won’t see it. Pinchy doesn’t block this — some users intentionally route images through tool calls — but the result depends entirely on what the agent does with the attachment.