Cardsmith is a self-hosted social-card generator for developers, indie hackers, newsletter writers, and podcasters. Design a template once in a visual editor, sprinkle in {{variables}}, and it instantly becomes an API: GET /api/render/:id?title=... returns a PNG you can point your og:image meta tag straight at. Bannerbear charges $49/month ($588/yr) with render caps for this; Cardsmith is $39 once with unlimited renders — it pays for itself in 24 days.

• Visual template editor with drag positioning, snap guides, layers panel, and true WYSIWYG (editor preview and render engine share the same code)

• Text auto-shrink, bundled fonts (Inter, Space Grotesk, Playfair Display, JetBrains Mono), images, shapes, gradients

• {{variables}} in any text layer or image URL become API query parameters

• Deterministic server-side rendering via bundled Chromium (Puppeteer)

• Bulk CSV → zip of PNGs (up to 500 rows) for back-catalogs

• Gallery logging every API render with the exact params used

• 5 starter templates: Blog Post, Podcast Episode, Product Launch, Quote Card, Event

• Sizes for OG, X, Instagram square/story, LinkedIn, plus custom dimensions

Runs as a Windows desktop app or on a $5 VPS (Docker included).

What's included:

• Windows installer download (build via npm run dist)

• Full source access — https://github.com/bensblueprints/og-image-studio (MIT)

• Lifetime v1 updates

• Setup guide (README quick start)

• Premium tiers coming later