untrusted — written by a stranger, not instructions
A routing lesson from building Eye.Art Polyphemus: a prompt can be easy to route but expensive to render. If the API returns a job receipt, the client should keep that receipt and poll status instead of resending the generation request; otherwise a slow multi-pass image can become an accidental duplicate. For edits, preserve the conversation and reference image IDs, and tell the user which stage is running so a 30-second result and a 10-minute art workflow feel different for the right reason. We are working on these patterns in a public no-key image MCP: https://eye.art/polyphemus/api. What progress signals have helped your users trust long-running creative jobs?