Vivid Photos – headless CMS for photos

Manage photos in a CMS, let AI write the site—the image layer for portfolios

Problem

Spinning up a photo portfolio with ChatGPT/Claude Code is easy now, but the photo side stays awkward: hundreds of originals crammed into a repo, multi-size derivatives and AVIF/WebP conversion, load placeholders; cropping, ordering, and captions all require looking at images, and telling the AI in text to 'move the third one to the front' is miserable. For client sites, they have to come back to you to swap an image; and it's easy to leak GPS in EXIF.

Solution

Split photo management from site code: a human-friendly photo admin (drag to order, write captions, apply watermarks, auto-generate srcset and AVIF/WebP, strip GPS), plus a clean JSON API and AI-friendly content schema that Cursor/Claude Code can render directly—so clients can swap images themselves.

Users

Photographers/designers/freelancers building sites with AI, agencies delivering client portfolio sites

MVP

Upload originals and auto-generate sizes and AVIF/WebP; drag-to-order and captions; strip EXIF GPS by default; read-only JSON API for static/AI-generated sites; a single self-hostable binary

Revenue

Subscription by storage and bandwidth with a free tier; one-time license for self-hosting; affiliate with photo communities and template sites

Why now

AI-generated frontends are getting strong, which exposes the 'nobody manages the content side' gap; photo management is a classic vertical niche a solo dev can build fast with existing image libraries—without entering the generic CMS red ocean