Dlazy Picture Book

picture book, storybook, children's book, illustrated story, bedtime story book, 绘本——create a complete picture book from a theme: write the paged story, generate style-consistent illustrations page by page with dlazy gpt-image-2, generate matching background music with dlazy elevenlabs-music, then assemble a self-contained HTML book with image-left / text-right spreads, page turning, and background music. Defaults to 10 pages. Use when the user wants a picture book / storybook / children's book / bedtime story, or says 'make me a picture book about ...'.

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picture book, storybook, children's book, illustrated story, bedtime story book, 绘本——create a complete picture book from a theme: write the paged story, generate style-consistent illustrations page by page with dlazy gpt-image-2, generate matching background music with dlazy elevenlabs-music, then assemble a self-contained HTML book with image-left / text-right spreads, page turning, and background music. Defaults to 10 pages.

Trigger Keywords

• picture book / storybook
• children's book / illustrated story
• bedtime story / story book
• 绘本 / 图画书
• make me a picture book about ...

Authentication

All dlazy requests require a dLazy API key. The recommended way to authenticate is:

bash

dlazy login

This runs a device-code flow (also works in remote shells) and automatically saves your API key to the local CLI config — no manual copy/paste required.

Alternative: Set the Key Manually

bash

dlazy auth set YOUR_API_KEY

The CLI saves the key in your user config directory (~/.dlazy/config.json on macOS/Linux, %USERPROFILE%\.dlazy\config.json on Windows), with file permissions restricted to your OS user account. You can also supply the key per-invocation via the DLAZY_API_KEY environment variable.

Getting Your API Key Manually

1. Sign in or create an account at dlazy.com
2. Go to dlazy.com/dashboard/organization/api-key
3. Copy the key shown in the API Key section

Each key is scoped to your dLazy organization and can be rotated or revoked at any time from the same dashboard.

About & Provenance

• CLI source code: github.com/dlazyai/cli
• Maintainer: dlazyai
• npm package: @dlazy/cli
• Homepage: dlazy.com

Run on demand without a global install:

bash

npx @dlazy/cli@latest <command>

Review the GitHub source before installing.

How It Works

Illustrations are generated by dlazy gpt-image-2 and background music by dlazy elevenlabs-music; both are thin clients over the dLazy hosted API:

• Prompts and parameters are sent to the dLazy API (api.dlazy.com) for inference.
• Local reference images are uploaded to dLazy media storage (files.dlazy.com); result URLs are also hosted there.

The story text, page composition, and HTML assembly happen locally — you (the agent) write the story and call this skill's scripts/build_book.py to inject the content into assets/template.html, producing a self-contained HTML. Standard SaaS pattern; the skill does not access network or filesystem beyond what the dLazy CLI handles.

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What the output looks like

A folder you can open directly; index.html is the book:

text

<book-title>/
├── index.html        ← the finished book (image-left/text-right, page turning, BGM)
├── book.json         ← content data (title, per-page image+text, music)
├── images/           ← cover.png, page-01.png … page-10.png
└── music/            ← bgm.mp3

Reading experience: cover (large image + title + "Start reading") → spreads (illustration on the left in 3:4, story text on the right; turn pages with arrow keys / click left-right / bottom dots) → end page. A background-music toggle sits top-right. On mobile it becomes image-top / text-bottom.

Images and music are referenced by relative paths, so the whole folder is portable and works offline.

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Workflow

A picture book is story + image + sound as one whole; quality comes from keeping the three coordinated. Do the steps in order — each sets up the next.

Step 0: Confirm the brief

Before starting, align on these (fill sensible defaults for anything unstated and say so — don't interrogate the user):

• Theme / core: what's the story, what does it convey (courage, sharing, friendship…)?
• Page count: defaults to 10; the user may specify otherwise.
• Audience age: defaults to 3–6. Drives text difficulty and sentence length.
• Art style: defaults to warm, healing watercolor children's-book style. Could also be flat illustration, crayon, Pixar-style 3D, etc.
• Protagonist: give it a concrete look (e.g. "a little fox in a red scarf") — it must stay consistent on every page.

Step 1: Write the paged story into book.json

Write the whole book's text first, then generate images, so the visuals follow one narrative thread.

• A full arc: opening (introduce hero + world) → setting out / a wish → a problem → a turn → a warm ending. Spread this across the 10 pages.
• 1–3 sentences per page, spoken and vivid, good to read aloud. Shorter for younger readers.
• Also note a visual description for each page (what to draw) — you'll need it next.

Write book.json first (image/music paths as placeholders that will already be correct once generated):

json

{
  "title": "The Little Fox's Star Lantern",
  "subtitle": "A warm story about sharing",
  "cover_image": "images/cover.png",
  "music": "music/bgm.mp3",
  "pages": [
    { "image": "images/page-01.png", "text": "Deep in the forest lived a little fox in a red scarf…" },
    { "image": "images/page-02.png", "text": "…" }
  ]
}

Step 2: Generate illustrations page by page (keep character + style consistent)

Consistency is where picture books fail — the same fox can't look different on every page. Use the first page as a style anchor:

1. Generate page 1 first, writing the character look, art style, palette, and composition in full detail. This sets the visual baseline for the whole book.

   bash

   dlazy gpt-image-2 --quality low --size 1024x1536 \
     --prompt "Children's book illustration, warm watercolor style, 3:4 portrait. An orange little fox in a red scarf lies on a windowsill gazing at the round moon outside, nighttime, soft warm lamplight, healing childlike mood, clean negative space."
   

2. Pass page 1 as the reference image via --images on every later page so the hero and style carry over; only the scene changes:

   bash

   dlazy gpt-image-2 --quality low --size 1024x1536 \
     --images images/page-01.png \
     --prompt "Same orange fox in a red scarf, same watercolor style and palette. This page: the fox shoulders a small backpack and walks into the forest under the moonlight. 3:4 portrait."
   

3. The result URL is at result.outputs[0].url. Download it into images/ with curl:

   bash

   curl -L -o images/page-01.png "<returned url>"
   

On parameters: --quality low is low quality (fast, cheap, plenty for small book art); --size 1024x1536 is the closest small portrait to 3:4 (gpt-image-2 has no exact 3:4 tier; the template crops to 3:4 so it looks right).

Cover: same idea — use page 1 as reference to generate a more atmospheric hero image into images/cover.png.

Execution discipline (important): run one generation command at a time — wait for it to return and download before the next — don't fire all 10 image commands at once or chain them with &/&&. This is both because later pages need the previous image as a reference and because &/&& error out under Windows PowerShell.

Step 3: Generate background music

Write one music prompt from the story's mood; give it enough length to cover a read-through (60–90s for a bedtime story is fine, it loops):

bash

dlazy elevenlabs-music --duration 75 \
  --prompt "Gentle, soothing children's bedtime music, soft piano and music box, dreamy and warm, a background for reading a picture book aloud, no vocals."

Download the result into music/bgm.mp3 with curl the same way.

Step 4: Assemble the HTML

Make sure the paths in book.json match the files you actually downloaded, then run this skill's build script:

bash

python3 <this-skill-dir>/scripts/build_book.py book.json -o index.html

It injects book.json into assets/template.html to produce a self-contained index.html. Keep index.html next to images/ and music/.

Step 5: Deliver

Tell the user the output folder path, that double-clicking index.html opens the book, and that the top-right button toggles the music. Share the cover image URL for a quick preview.

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Command cheatsheet

Illustration · gpt-image-2 (full help: dlazy gpt-image-2 -h)

Flag	Picture-book usage
--prompt	Scene description (character + scene + style + "3:4 portrait")
--images	Reference image (page-1 path) to keep character/style consistent, up to 5
--quality	low (small book art, fast and cheap)
--size	1024x1536 (closest small portrait to 3:4)

Background music · elevenlabs-music (full help: dlazy elevenlabs-music -h)

Flag	Picture-book usage
--prompt	Mood description (instruments, emotion, "no vocals", good for reading aloud)
--duration	Seconds; 60–90 is fine for a bedtime story, it loops

Results are always at result.outputs[0].url; download with curl -L -o <local path> "<url>".

Error Handling

Code	Error Type	Example Message
401	Unauthorized (No API Key)	ok: false, code: "unauthorized", message: "API key is missing or invalid"
501	Missing required parameter	error: required option '--prompt <prompt>' not specified
502	Local file read error	Error: Image file not found: C:\path\to\your\file
503	API request failed (no balance)	ok: false, code: "insufficient_balance"
503	API request failed (server error)	HTTP status code error (500 server crash)
504	Asynchronous task execution failed	=== Generation Failed === / {Specific error reason returned by backend, e.g. "Prompt violates safety policy"}

AGENT CRITICAL INSTRUCTION:

1. If the result returns code: "insufficient_balance", you MUST explicitly tell the user their credits are insufficient and guide them to recharge: https://dlazy.com/dashboard/organization/settings?tab=credits
2. If the result returns code: "unauthorized" or indicates a missing API key, you MUST tell the user to get their API key from https://dlazy.com/dashboard/organization/api-key and save it with dlazy auth set <key>, then resume.
3. If one image is rejected for violating the safety policy, rewrite that page's prompt (drop sensitive/violent/photoreal-person content) and retry — don't abandon the whole book.

Tips

Visit https://dlazy.com for more information.