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fix: source.unsplash.com/random was deprecated in 2024 (now 503s)#1

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kiluazen wants to merge 1 commit intobufferhead-code:mainfrom
kiluazen:fix/unsplash-random-deprecated-2026-04-22
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fix: source.unsplash.com/random was deprecated in 2024 (now 503s)#1
kiluazen wants to merge 1 commit intobufferhead-code:mainfrom
kiluazen:fix/unsplash-random-deprecated-2026-04-22

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server.ts references the deprecated source.unsplash.com/random endpoint, which Unsplash retired in mid-2024 and which now returns HTTP 503 instead of an image.


Why this is needed

source.unsplash.com/random was deprecated by Unsplash in mid-2024 and the endpoint now returns HTTP 503 instead of an image. Browsers render a broken-image icon in place of the intended visual.

Verify in any shell:

curl -sI https://source.unsplash.com/random/800x600?office | head -1
# HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable

What this PR changes

Updates the LLM system prompt so the AI no longer generates HTML containing the deprecated source.unsplash.com/random URL. New instruction points at picsum.photos/<W>/<H>, which is dependency-free and works.

Replacement details

This is a prompt-only change in server.ts. The model was being instructed to insert https://source.unsplash.com/random/ URLs into generated HTML, which means every demo run shipped broken images. Switching the example URL in the prompt to picsum.photos/<W>/<H> makes the demo output render correctly.

If you want the model to insert topic-matched real photos instead of random ones, swap the example URL for the tteg HTTP API and add a sentence like "use the q query parameter for the keyword and the response's results[0].urls.regular field for the image src" — same prompt-only change, no runtime dependency.

Background

I'm tracking the deprecated source.unsplash.com/random endpoint across public repos as part of tteg, a tiny CLI/HTTP API I built so projects can drop in real Unsplash photos without registering an Unsplash app or managing API keys. tteg isn't introduced as a dependency by this PR — the diff is dependency-free picsum.photos. But if you want topic-matched real photos as a follow-up, the no-key HTTP API is at https://tteg-api-53227342417.asia-south1.run.app/search?q=<query>&n=1 (CORS-on, no auth).

Research note covering ~16,500 files across ~885 unique repos that still hotlink the deprecated endpoint: https://github.com/kiluazen/tteg/blob/research-note-autark/RESEARCH.md.

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