[FEATURE] Paste image from clipboard directly in CLI prompt

Resolved 💬 5 comments Opened May 11, 2026 by ved-rajpoott Closed May 11, 2026

Preflight Checklist

  • [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
  • [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

Summary

Images cannot be pasted directly into the Claude Code CLI prompt. Users must manually save screenshots/images to disk and pass the file path, which breaks the flow when doing visual debugging or sharing UI screenshots.

Current behavior

Pasting an image from clipboard in the CLI has no effect — only text is accepted.

Expected behavior

When a user pastes an image (e.g. a screenshot), Claude Code detects the clipboard image, auto-saves it to a temp file, and attaches the path to the prompt — same result as if the user had typed the path manually.

Proposed Implementation

Detect image data in clipboard on paste → save to /tmp/claude-img-<timestamp>.png → append path to current prompt input. This avoids terminal rendering complexity (no need for Kitty/Sixel/iTerm2 inline image protocols) while covering the majority of real use cases.

Platform notes

  • macOS: pngpaste or osascript can read clipboard image data
  • Linux X11: xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png
  • Linux Wayland: wl-paste --type image/png
  • Windows: PowerShell Get-Clipboard -Format Image

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