baoyu-skills: An Open-Source Skill Set That Auto-Generates Article Illustrations with a Single Command

The Pain Point of Article Illustrations for Content Creators

Anyone who writes articles knows that the most time-consuming part of content creation is often not the writing itself, but finding and creating illustrations. Opening a design tool, crafting prompts, generating images, selecting satisfactory ones, then inserting them in the right places—this entire workflow easily eats up half an hour. What's even more frustrating is that after spending all that time generating images, the results are often disappointing.

The core obstacle here is the complexity of Prompt Engineering. For image generation models (such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Midjourney, etc.), prompt quality directly determines the style, composition, and details of generated images. Professional image prompts often need to include subject descriptions, style keywords, lighting settings, composition parameters, and more—the learning curve is quite steep. For content creators who focus primarily on writing, this additional technical barrier makes the illustration process the most maddening part of the entire creative workflow.

This pain point gave rise to an open-source project with nearly 19,000 Stars on GitHub—baoyu-skills (Baoyu Skill Set), which specifically addresses illustration efficiency in AI-assisted content creation.

What is baoyu-skills?

Core Positioning

baoyu-skills is a skill set designed for AI programming/conversation tools like Claude Code and Codex. Its most popular feature is "automatic article illustration."

The term "skill set" essentially refers to a structured combination of System Prompts and tool-calling rules. In AI coding assistants like Claude Code and Codex, developers can inject custom instructions to extend the AI's default behavioral boundaries, giving it specialized capabilities in specific domains. This pattern is similar to browser plugins or IDE extensions—equipping a general-purpose AI with vertical-scenario expertise without requiring users to manually write complex instructions each time.

The working principle of baoyu-skills isn't complicated: it injects a carefully designed set of instruction rules into the AI conversation environment, giving the AI the ability to automatically analyze article structure, determine illustration placement, select appropriate styles, and generate images.

Workflow

To use it, you simply feed your article content to the AI and say something like "Use baoyu-skills to create illustrations for me." The AI then automatically completes the following steps:

1. Analyze article structure: Identifies which paragraphs need illustrations and which concepts are suitable for visualization
2. Select image style: Automatically matches styles based on article tone, supporting nine preset styles including tech, hand-drawn, minimalist, and more
3. Generate images: Calls image generation models to create illustrations
4. Auto-insert: Places images at the correct positions in the article

The entire process takes about three minutes, transforming plain text into a fully illustrated article.

How Does It Perform in Practice?

From actual demonstrations, the illustrations generated by baoyu-skills are quite impressive in quality, and the tool supports interactive modifications. If you're unhappy with a particular image, you can make revision requests in natural language—for example, "Add an arrow to the second image" or "Generate two more illustrations"—and the AI responds immediately.

This interaction method has clear advantages over traditional image generation tools:

• Zero learning cost: No need to learn complex prompt engineering; the AI automatically translates your intent into professional image generation instructions behind the scenes
• Context awareness: The AI understands the article content, so illustrations are more relevant to the topic rather than being disconnected standalone images
• Easy iteration: Modifications require just one sentence, no need to restart the entire process

Installation & Usage Guide

Configuration Steps

Using baoyu-skills requires just two steps:

Step 1: Install the skill set

Obtain the baoyu-skills configuration file from the GitHub repository and integrate it into your AI tool (such as Claude Code or Codex) following the project documentation.

Step 2: Invoke in conversation

In your conversation with the AI, simply say "Use baoyu-skills to create illustrations for me" and provide your article content.

Notes

• Some image generation features require calling cloud-based models and may involve API costs
• Different AI tools may have varying levels of support for skill sets
• It's recommended to test with short articles first, then handle longer pieces once you're familiar with the workflow

What This Means for Content Creators

baoyu-skills represents an important trend: AI tools are evolving from point solutions to workflow automation.

This evolution is known in the industry as Agentic Workflow, and it's the core development direction for current large model applications. Unlike early "question-and-answer" style AI interactions, workflow automation enables AI to decompose complex tasks, invoke multiple external tools, maintain contextual coherence across multiple steps, and ultimately complete end-to-end compound tasks. Leading organizations including Anthropic and OpenAI released intensive model capabilities supporting Tool Use / Function Calling around 2024, providing solid foundational support for automation tools like baoyu-skills.

In the past, when we used AI to generate images, we still needed manual judgment about where to insert illustrations, what style to use, and how to layout. Now these decisions can also be delegated to AI—this is the critical leap from "AI as a tool" to "AI as a collaborator."

For content creators who publish daily, saving 20-30 minutes of illustration time per article adds up to over 10 hours per month. That time can be spent polishing content quality, or simply working a little less overtime.

Of course, AI auto-illustration cannot yet fully replace the aesthetic judgment of professional designers, but for most content creation scenarios, it's already a good-enough solution.

Key Takeaways

• baoyu-skills is an open-source skill set with nearly 19,000 Stars on GitHub, designed specifically for tools like Claude Code and Codex
• The skill set is essentially a combination of structured system prompts and tool-calling rules, giving general-purpose AI specialized capabilities for vertical scenarios
• The core feature is automatic article illustration: AI analyzes article structure, selects styles, generates images, and inserts them at correct positions—no prompt engineering knowledge required
• Supports nine preset styles and natural language interactive modifications; the entire illustration process takes about three minutes
• Installation requires just two steps: integrate the skill set configuration file, then invoke via natural language in conversation
• Represents the industry trend of AI tools evolving from point solutions to Agentic Workflow automation