generate_image

Generates an AI image on the signed-in aicut account and puts the aicut card in front of the user. It waits for the image server-side for as long as one request safely can - about 20 seconds - so it usually returns the finished image with its url directly. WHEN: the user asks for an image. Call list_models first if you have not this session - the model id and the allowed values for every other argument come from there, and a combination it does not publish is rejected. AFTER: check status. If it is succeeded the image is finished - go straight to the SHOW rule below. If it is queued or processing, the image was not ready in time and is still being made: call wait_for_generation with the returned id and media: "image", then follow both rules below. THE CARD: this call has ALREADY put the aicut card in front of the user. It shows the prompt and the model straight away - plus the aspect ratio and a correctly-shaped empty frame for a video or an image, while AUDIO has neither and simply shows the prompt until the player appears - and it fills in the finished media on its own, so you do not have to do anything to make that happen. Do NOT call show_generation for this job: the card is already in the conversation and a second call would put a duplicate one beside it. show_generation is only for bringing back an EARLIER generation the user asks to see again. HOW TO WAIT: call wait_for_generation with this job's id and its media. It waits SERVER-SIDE for up to 15 seconds and opens no card. If it answers terminal: false, wait poll_after_seconds and call wait_for_generation again with the same arguments - keep doing that until it answers terminal: true, then tell the user in ONE short line what came out. Do not poll get_video / get_image / get_audio in a loop instead, and do not spawn timers or background shells to wait. Say nothing between waits: do NOT tell the user the generation is running and that you will fetch the result when they ask - just wait, then tell them it is done. IF YOU CANNOT RENDER AN AICUT CARD - a terminal, a plain SDK client, anything that did not negotiate the MCP Apps UI extension - then no card appeared here, so give the user the url from the wait result directly. aicut cannot see which clients render cards and sends the same answer to all of them. TIMING: an image usually finishes in under 90 seconds, and can take up to about 4 minutes. generate_image waits about 20 seconds for it server-side; if it returns while the image is still processing, call wait_for_generation rather than waiting in a timer or a background shell. COST: this spends the user's tokens. Pass estimate_only: true first to get the exact price without creating anything - and do that whenever the user has not already agreed to the cost, or when the balance may be tight. SPEND ETIQUETTE (the money grammar): in the webapp the priced button is the user's own finger; in chat YOUR tool call is not - so state the price IN THE SAME MESSAGE as the ask, and the user's explicit go is the button press. Never charge on inference: quoting is not asking, and after a price you wait for the yes. THIS APPLIES TO EVERY TOOL CARRYING THIS NOTE, including this one. A GO IS SCOPED TO ONE PURCHASE, AND IT MUST BE UNAMBIGUOUS. The user's instruction has to NAME the thing you are about to buy, or refer to it so plainly that it cannot mean anything else. A BARE AFFIRMATION - 'go', 'yes', 'ok', 'do it', 'just do it', 'sure' - counts ONLY when ALL THREE of these hold: the message immediately before it was YOUR priced ask for THAT EXACT action, nothing else was raised in between, and NOTHING THE USER ASKED FOR EARLIER IS STILL OUTSTANDING. That last one is the trap the others miss: if the user's OWN previous turn asked for something else - a refusal, a different scene, an edit, a redraw, a question - their 'just do it' may be answering THAT, and it is AMBIGUOUS even when your priced ask happens to be the last thing said in the thread. An ambiguous affirmation is not a go: ask WHICH one they mean and state that price again. WHEN IN DOUBT ABOUT WHAT A 'GO' REFERS TO, ASK. A wrong guess spends the user's money on something they never asked for, and nothing on this surface can undo it or give it back - asking costs one sentence. An episode's STAGES - cast portraits, episode create, fire, render - are each their own priced ask. A STANDING GO IS NOT UNLIMITED: 'just make it' or 'go ahead with the whole episode' authorizes the stages you PRICED IN THAT SAME MESSAGE, in the order you named them, and nothing beyond them - so do not re-ask per stage while it holds, and do not stretch it over a stage whose price the user never saw. IT EXPIRES THE MOMENT THE USER RAISES ANYTHING ELSE - a change, a question, a refusal, a redraw, a new idea - and after that the next stage needs its own priced ask. ONE STAGE IS NEVER COVERED BY A STANDING GO AT ALL: the FIRE (fire_story_video) is irreversible and the biggest single charge in the episode, so it always takes a go that NAMES firing, whatever was said earlier - see that tool's own note. A REDRAW IS NOT A STAGE: regenerate_story_frame and regenerate_cast_portrait are extra spends the user asks for one at a time, so state that price every time, even under a standing go. A standing go never carries to a different episode, and never to generate_video, generate_image or generate_audio - each of those is its own ask. ACCOUNT FOR YOUR OWN CALLS: if the user says something happened that you did not intend - a charge they did not expect, a step they did not ask for - RE-READ YOUR OWN TOOL CALLS IN THIS CONVERSATION before you answer, and tell them plainly which tools you called and when. NEVER SPECULATE ABOUT A CAUSE YOU CANNOT OBSERVE: not a button on an aicut card, not the user's own click, not their client. The aicut cards CANNOT SPEND - the only tools they ever call are the reads (get_video / get_image / get_audio), and their buttons either save a file or send a VISIBLE user turn into the chat - none of them calls a spending tool - so saying a card might have generated or charged something is false, not a hedge. (If a spend followed one of those visible turns, it was still YOUR call, and the honest answer names it.) If your call history disagrees with what you told the user, say what you actually called and let them correct you; do not invent an explanation that makes the two agree. IDEMPOTENCY: idempotency_key is optional and makes a retry safe. Set it on the FIRST call, not only on a retry - the job is addressed by the key, so a key added afterwards cannot find a job that was created without one. Reusing a key REPLAYS the job that key already created and returns it unchanged - even if you send a different prompt or different settings, and even after that job has finished. A key is therefore spent permanently. Do NOT reuse one to make another generation: two deliberate generations are two jobs and need two different keys (or none). ONE EXCEPTION, on render_story_video: replaying a key whose render FAILED answers 409 render_failed rather than replaying the failure, because a spent key stays spent - retry that one with a NEW key or with none. A KEY IS NOT SCOPED TO A TOOL: it addresses a job on the whole account, so reusing the key you gave generate_video on generate_story_video replays that first video instead of starting an episode. One key, one thing you made. (render_story_video is the one door that namespaces its own, which is why an episode's key can be reused on its render without colliding - but there is no reason to reuse it there either.) Never derive the key from the request body. You do NOT need to pass one to be safe against a duplicated delivery: aicut already derives a per-call key server-side, so a retry the transport makes on its own replays rather than charging twice. Pass your own only when YOU want to retry a call whose answer you never saw. OUTPUT: this returns JSON for you to read. When you report back to the user, give them the media URL plus a one-line summary. Do not paste the raw JSON, job ids, or internal field names into the conversation.