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TheGlitch
TheGlitch

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I Built a Stateless Image Processing API — Here's How It Works

#showdev #webdev #programming #api

Every web project eventually runs into the same problem: you need to resize an image, convert a format, maybe add some effects, or strip a background. You can set up ImageMagick, wrestle with Sharp, or build custom pipelines — or you can make one HTTP call.

That's why I built TheGlitch — a stateless image processing API that handles everything in a single request.

The Problem

Image processing infrastructure is surprisingly complex:

  • Installing native dependencies on different OS targets
  • Managing temporary files and disk cleanup
  • Handling format quirks (AVIF support, GIF animation, color profiles)
  • GPU acceleration for AI operations like background removal
  • Scaling under load without leaking memory

I wanted an API where you send an image in and get a processed image out. Nothing stored, nothing cached on disk, no state between requests.

How It Works

TheGlitch processes images entirely in memory. The pipeline looks like this:

Input (URL/base64/binary/form) 
  → Decode & Validate 
  → Resize & Crop 
  → Apply Effects 
  → Format Convert 
  → Return Binary
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A single GET request can do everything:

curl "https://theglitch.p.rapidapi.com/api/v1/process?\
url=https://picsum.photos/1000&\
width=800&\
format=webp&\
brightness=10&\
contrast=15&\
sharpen=20" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: theglitch.p.rapidapi.com" \
  -o result.webp
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Features

Resize & Crop — Four modes: fit (preserve aspect ratio), fill (crop to exact size), pad (add borders), stretch. Resolutions up to 8000x8000px.

Format Conversion — Input/output: JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF. Quality control per format.

7 Visual Effects — Brightness, contrast, saturation, blur, sharpen, grayscale, sepia. All combinable in one request.

AI Background Removal — GPU-powered, takes about 3 seconds per image. Returns transparent PNG.

14 Social Media Presets — Instagram square, Facebook cover, YouTube thumbnail, LinkedIn banner, and more. One parameter instead of remembering dimensions.

Code Examples

JavaScript:

const response = await fetch(
  'https://theglitch.p.rapidapi.com/api/v1/process?url=IMAGE_URL&width=800&format=webp',
  { headers: { 'X-RapidAPI-Key': 'YOUR_KEY', 'X-RapidAPI-Host': 'theglitch.p.rapidapi.com' } }
);
const blob = await response.blob();
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Python:

import requests

response = requests.get(
    'https://theglitch.p.rapidapi.com/api/v1/process',
    params={'url': 'IMAGE_URL', 'width': 800, 'format': 'webp'},
    headers={'X-RapidAPI-Key': 'YOUR_KEY', 'X-RapidAPI-Host': 'theglitch.p.rapidapi.com'}
)

with open('result.webp', 'wb') as f:
    f.write(response.content)
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Why Stateless?

Every image is processed in memory and discarded after the response is sent. This means:

  • GDPR compliant by design — no user data stored, ever
  • No disk I/O bottleneck — everything happens in RAM
  • Predictable scaling — each request is independent
  • No cleanup jobs — nothing to garbage collect

Architecture Decisions

A few things I learned while building this:

  1. SkiaSharp over ImageMagick — Native performance, cross-platform, no external dependencies. The tradeoff is less format support (no real AVIF encoding yet), but WebP covers most use cases.

  2. Replicate for GPU ops — Instead of running my own GPU server, I proxy AI operations through Replicate. Background removal costs about $0.0014 per image with BiRefNet. Cold starts are free for public models.

  3. Separate CPU and GPU rate limits — CPU operations (resize, effects, format) are cheap. GPU operations (background removal) are expensive. Different limits per plan make pricing fair.

  4. Single VPS deployment — Docker Compose with Caddy as reverse proxy, Cloudflare in front for CDN/DDoS/SSL. Total infrastructure cost: under $6/month.

API Endpoints

Endpoint What it does
/api/v1/process Full pipeline — resize + effects + format
/api/v1/resize Resize only
/api/v1/convert Format conversion
/api/v1/effects Visual effects
/api/v1/remove-bg AI background removal (GPU)
/api/v1/optimize Auto-optimize for web (WebP)
/api/v1/preset/{name} Social media presets

Try It

The API is live with a free tier (500 requests/month). Check out the before/after examples on the website, or try it directly through RapidAPI:

I'd love to hear what features you'd find useful. Background removal was the most requested during beta — what would you want next?

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