Retro Diffusion Pixel Art

What Retro Diffusion Pixel Art does

Retro Diffusion Pixel Art MCP server exposes the hosted Retro Diffusion API as MCP tools for creating and processing pixel-art assets. Generation covers still images, GIFs, sprite sheets, and tilesets, with style catalogs, model selection, size constraints, and optional reference images for consistency. The service delivers hosted output URLs rather than raw generation base64 in the MCP response.

The available model families are RD Fast, RD Plus, RD Pro, and RD Mini. Styles can be inspected for their supported capabilities and limits, while custom styles can be created from a reference image using an RD Pro template and later updated or deleted.

How it works

Clients connect to https://mcp.retrodiffusion.ai/mcp using Streamable HTTP and send an Authorization: Bearer header containing an API key that starts with rdpk-. The server is hosted remotely, so the repository does not need to be run locally. Any MCP client that supports Streamable HTTP can use the endpoint.

Use synchronous generation for direct results, or start an asynchronous job and poll it for completion. Animations and batches are recommended for the asynchronous path. If a submission response is lost, recent jobs can be listed to recover a task ID. If a successful synchronous result has missing or expired URLs, its request ID can retrieve fresh signed URLs without generating or charging again. Generation is not idempotent, so repeating a request after a timeout can result in a duplicate charge.

Setup and configuration

Create an account at Retro Diffusion, create an API key in Developer Tools, and provide that key in the MCP connection header. New accounts include starter credits. Pricing is prepaid and charged per generation; cost estimates are available before spending, and credits do not expire.

The README gives setup examples for Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code with GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, and Claude Desktop. Claude Desktop uses mcp-remote as a local bridge to the hosted endpoint. The same URL and authorization header can be configured in other Streamable HTTP clients.

Tools and capabilities

The Retro Diffusion Pixel Art MCP server includes tools for:

• Creating images, animations, and tilesets, then recovering synchronous results or tracking asynchronous jobs.
• Estimating inference and edit costs without charging for the estimate.
• Listing and running edits such as background removal, palette conversion, color reduction, rotation, pixel correction, downscaling, inpainting, outpainting, image editing, and seam tiling.
• Running fix_pixel_art to recover a native pixel grid from enlarged, softened, AI-rendered, or compressed artwork.
• Browsing styles and models, reading style-specific guidance, and managing custom user styles.
• Authenticating, checking prepaid balance, checking service health, and clearing the stored session key.

fix_pixel_art accepts PNG or JPEG data as raw base64 or a data URL. Inputs must be at least 16×16 and no larger than 4 megapixels. That tool has a limit of 10 requests per minute per API key, with request and response JSON size limits documented by the project.

Prompting should describe the subject rather than explicitly asking for “pixel art”; the selected style controls the rendering. Supported dimensions vary by style, from 16×16 to 384×384, so clients should query the live style catalog before choosing output dimensions.