Release illustrations generated and displayed on site
GitPulse now generates and displays AI-crafted "Special Edition" editorial illustrations for releases. The images appear on release cards and detail pages, with caching that avoids regenerating unchanged releases.
Release pages now display AI-generated editorial illustrations. The three-part image pipeline—storage abstraction in PR 1, feature illustrations in PR 2—completes with release artwork.
When analyzing a repository, GitPulse generates a "Special Edition" illustration for each release, capturing the release's quip, story, top stories, and release notes. The image renders between the hero text and stats on the homepage, and above the story on release detail pages. Both locations use a vignette and gold accent treatment.
Image generation follows the same non-blocking contract as feature images: if generation or upload fails, the error logs but the release JSON still writes. Existing images are preserved when the release content hasn't changed. Older releases without images are backfilled on the next run.
The implementation shares the provider abstraction and MIME normalization logic with feature image generation, with the extension lookup extracted to a common module.