Get started

Quickstart

The fastest path from sign-up to your first generated scene. Takes about 5 minutes. By the end you’ll have a locked character + a reference sheet + a scene generation in your library.

1. Sign up

Head to steadyshot.ai/signup and create an account. You get 20 free credits — enough to lock a character, generate a 5-pose reference sheet, and produce a handful of scenes.

2. Create a character

From the dashboard, click Create Character and fill in:

Name — e.g. “Luna the cat”
Visual description — concrete details (colors, clothing, distinctive features). The richer this is, the more consistent generations will be.
Art style (optional) — e.g. “Pixar 3D”, “watercolor”, “anime”.
Reference image (optional) — if you upload one, SteadyShot uses it as the visual anchor instead of relying purely on the text description.

No reference image? On the next step (Refine Identity), Claude can auto-expand your short description into a prompt-ready identity descriptor in 5 seconds. Free.

3. Refine identity with AI

After creation you land on a Refine Identity step. Hit Auto-fill with AI to have Claude expand your description into a rich identity descriptor (eye color, clothing details, proportions, etc.), or type an instruction like “make the scarf red, add round glasses” to guide the edit. Continue when you’re happy.

4. Generate a reference sheet

Pick which views to generate — default is front · left_side · back · happy · sad. Each view costs 1 credit. The front pose is generated first and becomes the visual anchor for the others, so character identity stays consistent across angles and expressions.

5. Lock the character

Once you’re happy with the references, hit Lock on the character detail page. Locking freezes the descriptor + references — from then on every scene generation anchors against the exact same identity. Drafts can be edited; locked characters can’t (until you unlock).

Locking is the gate for scene generation, library publishing, marketplace listing, and external API calls. Drafts can’t do any of those.

6. Generate a scene

On the locked character’s page, find the Generate Scene section, type a scene description (“Luna reading a book under a cherry blossom tree”), and click generate. Costs 1 credit; takes ~30 seconds. The result lands in the Generated Scenes grid below.

7. Take it further

Vary the scene — create 4 near-clones differing only in expression, outfit, lighting, etc.
Build a storybook — chain multiple scenes for cross-page coherence.
Wire it into Claude Desktop so you can generate scenes by natural language.
List on the marketplace if you want other creators to be able to import your character.

Same flow via the API

Everything above also works via REST. Grab an API key from /api-keys, then:

bash

# Create a character (returns id)
curl -X POST https://steadyshot.ai/api/characters \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ss_live_xxx" \
  -F name="Luna the cat" \
  -F description="A round orange tabby with green eyes and a blue scarf" \
  -F style_notes="watercolor"

# Lock it (after the descriptor + references look good)
curl -X POST https://steadyshot.ai/api/characters/{id}/lock \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ss_live_xxx"

# Generate a scene
curl -X POST https://steadyshot.ai/api/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ss_live_xxx" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"character_id":"{id}","prompt":"Luna reading by a campfire"}'

See the REST API docs for the full surface area + auth details.

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Overview

Characters