#Image Attachments

When you paste or autocomplete an image path, crabcode inserts a placeholder such as [Image #1]. The placeholder is rendered as interactive text: hovering changes the text color only, and clicking it opens the image.

By default, image opening uses automatic detection:

{
  "images": {
    "openWith": "auto",
  },
}

#images.openWith

images.openWith controls where clicked image placeholders open.

auto treats standalone terminals such as WezTerm, iTerm, Terminal.app, Alacritty, and Kitty as normal terminals, so they open images with the OS-level file opener.

File path clicks (not image placeholders) use editor.open instead.

#Custom command

Use a command object when you want complete control over the opener:

{
  "images": {
    "openWith": {
      "command": "zed",
      "args": ["{path}"],
    },
  },
}

Other examples:

{
  "images": {
    "openWith": {
      "command": "open",
      "args": ["-a", "Preview", "{path}"],
    },
  },
}

If args is omitted, crabcode uses ["{path}"].

#Vision subagent

Some coding models can work with images only when another vision-capable model describes the image first. Crabcode ships a built-in vlm-agent subagent for that workflow instead of sending raw images to models that reject image input.

Configure the built-in subagent with a vision-capable model:

{
  "agent": {
    "vlm-agent": {
      "model": "xai/grok-4.3",
    },
  },
}

When the active model cannot receive raw images and agent.vlm-agent.model is configured, Crabcode exposes vlm-agent as an available subagent and includes the existing local image paths in the text prompt. The active model is instructed to call the task tool with subagent_type: "vlm-agent"; the subagent uses view_image directly on those paths and returns visual findings for the active model to use in its answer. During this fallback turn, the parent model is not given direct view_image access, so image inspection goes through vlm-agent instead of the parent guessing a path.

If the active model cannot receive raw images and agent.vlm-agent.model is not configured, Crabcode shows a warning toast with the config hint and sends a text-only note instead of making a failing image request.