paste-preview

paste-preview is an MIT-licensed Claude Code plugin by alan890104 that shows thumbnails of images pasted into the terminal prompt and opens a markup editor the moment an image is pasted. It runs on macOS, Linux and Windows and requires Claude Code 2.1.291 or newer.

What It Is

In the terminal, a pasted image appears only as a label such as [Image #1]. This mod displays each pasted image as a thumbnail above the prompt, labelled Image #N, and shows thumbnails in the transcript for sent prompts. Thumbnails need a terminal that supports the kitty graphics protocol, such as Ghostty or kitty; other terminals show Image #N with an Edit button instead.

Editing Before Sending

The editor offers pen, ellipse, box, arrow, text, crop, rotate, seven colours and undo, with keyboard shortcuts for each tool. Enter confirms the edit and Esc keeps the picture as pasted. An existing picture can be reopened with the Edit button under its thumbnail. On macOS the editor is a native floating panel that works over a full-screen terminal; on Linux and Windows it opens as a browser app window.

How the Edited Image Reaches Claude

A plugin cannot change an image in a message, only drop one. At Enter the mod drops the original image block and adds a note for Claude naming the edited file, which Claude then reads. If the mod cannot identify the right block, it drops nothing, so Claude receives both images rather than the wrong one.

Setup Path

Install from within a Claude Code session with the plugin install command and the marketplace alan890104/claude-code-paste-preview. It takes effect without a restart. macOS needs the Xcode Command Line Tools for the native panel; Linux and Windows need Node.js 18 or newer. The editor and labels follow the system language in English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Limits

On Linux and Windows the browser-window editor may switch desktops over a full-screen terminal. Transcript thumbnails cover only the current session, and inside tmux or GNU screen thumbnails are not shown, though the editor still works.