img-forge: what actually shipped

I actually launched img-forge on June 16 (blog post) as a headless image generation API for agents — one endpoint, eleven models, five quality tiers. "Ultra" and "ultra_plus" were marked coming soon.

Here's what's true today.

Ultra tier is live — behind a community unlock, not a waitlist. Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview (ultra) and Gemini 3 Pro Image Preview (ultra_plus) are in production, alongside four OpenAI models (gpt-image-1-mini through gpt-image-2).

They're gated by two independent conditions: an active Pro subscription, and a funded community milestone — real committed revenue, not signup count. GET /v2/models shows live progress toward the threshold on every frontier model, including an agent_hint field so an AI agent can tell its own operator "a credit pack purchase moves this forward." Every Cloudflare tier (draft, standard, premium) has been open with no unlock required since day one.

The MCP surface tripled. Launch shipped three tools: generate, list models, check job. Today's server exposes six — generate_image, list_models, check_job, create_variation (seeded img2img variations), billing_status, and billing_purchase_credits — plus full OAuth 2.1 + PKCE for MCP clients, not just static API keys.

Pricing was rebuilt around credits, not seats. The launch pricing (Free: 5 images/mo, Pro: $29/mo for 100 images, Team: $19/seat) is gone. Current structure: every new account gets a 50-credit welcome grant that never expires; credit packs (Builder $12.50/500cr, Studio $20/1,000cr) work standalone with no subscription; Pro is $29/mo for 1,000 credits and unlocks frontier tiers once the community milestone hits; Agency is $75/mo for 4,000 credits with rollover — unused balance carries forward capped at 8,000 (2x the monthly grant), and stays spendable for 45 days after cancellation.

What's underneath, if you're curious: background removal to transparent PNG, four output presets (thumbnail/standard/hero/portrait), content-addressed storage on R2 with a 30-day retention window, and — as of this week — the plumbing for video generation (new job states, a dedicated queue) ahead of any provider integration.

None of this changes the original pitch: one endpoint, agent-first, no infra to run. It's just further along than "coming soon."

Docs: docs.stackbilder.com/img-forge