caratulai — symbols, not pictures

Thirteen ways of seeing

A profile is a visual grammar: a palette, an element budget, and a way of composing. Same concepts, different eyes.

saganVoyager Golden Record

picassoSingle line

contentoRich complexity

dictionaryVisual dictionary

freudPsychological layers

jungArchetypal symbols

nietzscheGenealogy of concepts

boochEngineering clarity

carlinLinguistic subversion

trungpaSacred paradox

rosinaGrounded realism

domingoMusical range

gabrielMagic realism

In practice: picture of a thing → symbol for it

conten.to's post covers were technically fine but denotative — pictures of the subject, not symbols for it. caratulai reads the generated image with a vision model, extracts the concepts, and re-renders them as a symbolic SVG seal. These are the covers actually in use on conten.to today.

From “Healthy” to Healthy

AI-generated post cover: a rainy medicine cabinet beside a sunlit kitchen with fresh food — **generated image** raster cover — medicine cabinet in the rain, fresh food in the sun

--from-image

Symbolic SVG caratula: the body drawn as a plumbing machine with dials for eyes, intake and exhaust pipes — **symbolic SVG · rosina** the body as a machine — intake, dials, exhaust; every line does work

The New Job Market

AI-generated post cover: a craft-era workshop beside a room of holographic job-market dashboards — **generated image** raster cover — craft-era workshop, holographic job-market screens

--from-image

Symbolic SVG caratula: a stick figure pushing a large spoked wheel along a measured track — **symbolic SVG · rosina** a figure pushing the wheel along a measured track — stark, unglamorous, essential

./caratulai.sh generate --from-image https://conten.to/images/post/healthy.png --profile rosina

Quick start

Requires Node ≥ 20 and pnpm.

git clone https://github.com/contento/caratulai
cd caratulai
pnpm install && pnpm build

./caratulai.sh generate star water travel --profile sagan --out out/idea.svg

Tags, narrative text, URLs, or images in — an SVG seal in a fundamental palette out. See the README and wiki for the full profile list, providers, and configuration.