Blog Header Image

This skill belongs to the André Lademann Skills catalog. Invoke it as andrelademann-blog-header-image.

Generate the actual header image for a blog post, not merely a prompt. This skill creates the single visual used as both the post's heroImage and ogImage on blog.andrelademann.de.

Establish the visual brief

Read the complete target post and its frontmatter before generating anything.
Build the image around the article's central claim, not just its broad category. A post about an AI usage habit, for example, needs a meaningful human or workspace moment rather than a stock robot.
Respect user-supplied visual direction. If no direction is given, make a tasteful choice that serves the article without adding invented products, companies, events, or claims.

André Lademann reference images

assets/andre-lademann-reference/portrait.png is the image-generation-ready primary identity reference for André; portrait.heic preserves the original source photo.
assets/andre-lademann-reference/workspace.png is a supporting reference for his appearance and working environment.
assets/andre-lademann-reference/stickered-laptop-back.jpg preserves the original photo of André's personal sticker-covered laptop; the matching .png is the image-generation-ready version. Use it when a blog image should include his laptop; preserve the distinctive lived-in sticker collage without reproducing readable third-party text or logos unless explicitly requested.
When the user asks to show André, inspect the relevant references and provide them to the image-generation flow as identity references. Preserve his recognisable appearance without copying the reference scene, outfit, or screen content unless requested.
These files are private skill assets. Keep them outside public/ and do not link them from a post.

Generate with Codex or ChatGPT

In Codex or ChatGPT, use the built-in image-generation capability directly. Do not stop at an image-prompt or ask the user to generate the image elsewhere.
Generate a landscape, photorealistic editorial photograph with real lighting, materials, environment details, lens and depth-of-field direction.
Make the scene suitable for a personal engineering blog: intelligent and specific, never a generic glossy stock-tech composition.
Do not include headlines, labels, logos, watermarks, pseudo-interface text, illustration styling, vector aesthetics, or 3D-render aesthetics unless the user explicitly requests them.
Inspect the generated result. Correct a concrete issue with one targeted iteration before selecting the final asset.

Integrate safely

Derive {year} from the post's pubDatetime and save the selected image as public/images/posts/{year}/{slug}/hero.png.
Do not overwrite an existing hero.png; use a versioned sibling or ask for replacement authority.
Set both fields to the public path:

heroImage: "/images/posts/{year}/{slug}/hero.png"
ogImage: "/images/posts/{year}/{slug}/hero.png"

Verify that the file exists, the frontmatter path resolves under public/, and the article still passes the repository's content checks.

Report the final asset path, the prompt used, and that direct image generation was used.