Animated banners · shields-compatible badges · typing text · 3,400+ tech icons · GitHub stats, streak & trophy cards
Free. No token. No signup. One URL per image.

Open the studio →

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Every image in this README is a live URL served by Mark. Paste a URL into any README, issue, or site and it renders — nothing to install, no account, no API key.

Already using shields.io, capsule-render, skill-icons, readme-typing-svg or github-readme-stats? Keep your URL and change only the host (dialects).

Gallery

Banners — 8 styles, 8 themes

Styles: waving aurora mesh spotlight grid minimal terminal transparent. Themes: dark light ocean sunset forest grape mono paper — or your own colours with color=. Motion is quiet by default: the light drifts slowly and the text stays still. fade, rise and type play once; none is a still image.

![](https://mark.sylphx.com/api/v1/mark/hero?type=aurora&theme=grape&text=Hello%2C%20README&desc=One%20URL%2C%20one%20image)

Badges — shields syntax, plus 3,400+ logos

![](https://mark.sylphx.com/badge/made_with-Rust-dea584?style=for-the-badge&logo=rust)

Score badges

A progress ring and automatic color grading (red → bright green) from value and max.

Typing text

![](https://mark.sylphx.com/typing?lines=Hi%20there;I%20build%20tools&center=true)

Tech icons — every Simple Icons brand

![](https://mark.sylphx.com/icons?i=rust,ts,react,docker&theme=dark)

GitHub stats — live, cached, no token

![](https://mark.sylphx.com/api?username=YOUR_NAME&show_icons=true)
![](https://mark.sylphx.com/api/top-langs?username=YOUR_NAME&layout=compact)
![](https://mark.sylphx.com/streak?user=YOUR_NAME)
![](https://mark.sylphx.com/trophy?username=YOUR_NAME)

Dynamic badges use shields' paths:

Source	Paths
GitHub	/github/{stars,forks,license,last-commit}/{owner}/{repo}, /github/v/release/{owner}/{repo}, /github/actions/workflow/status/{owner}/{repo}/{file} (?branch=, ?event=)
npm	/npm/{v,dm,dw,dt,l}/{package} (scoped too)
pub.dev	/pub/{v,likes,points,dm}/{package}
Packagist	/packagist/{v,dm,dd,dt}/{vendor}/{package}
Bundlephobia	/bundlephobia/{min,minzip}/{package}
Chrome Web Store	/chrome-web-store/{v,users,rating,stars,rating-count}/{id}

Star history

![](https://mark.sylphx.com/svg?repos=owner/repo&theme=dark)

A star-history.com URL works with only the host changed. GitHub shares star dates only with the people who can manage a repository, so the chart draws a curve for repositories Mark's server can read; for any other repository it shows today's total.

Profile cards

Switch by changing the host

Mark reads the URL formats you already use. Keep the path and query, change the host:

You have	Change it to
img.shields.io/badge/build-passing-brightgreen	mark.sylphx.com/badge/build-passing-brightgreen
img.shields.io/github/stars/owner/repo	mark.sylphx.com/github/stars/owner/repo
img.shields.io/npm/v/package	mark.sylphx.com/npm/v/package
capsule-render.vercel.app/api?type=waving&text=Hi	mark.sylphx.com/api?type=waving&text=Hi
skillicons.dev/icons?i=rust,ts	mark.sylphx.com/icons?i=rust,ts
readme-typing-svg.demolab.com?lines=Hello;World	mark.sylphx.com/?lines=Hello;World
github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api?username=you	mark.sylphx.com/api?username=you
github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs?username=you	mark.sylphx.com/api/top-langs?username=you
github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/pin?username=you&repo=r	mark.sylphx.com/api/pin?username=you&repo=r
streak-stats.demolab.com?user=you	mark.sylphx.com/?user=you
github-profile-trophy.vercel.app/?username=you	mark.sylphx.com/?username=you
api.star-history.com/svg?repos=owner/repo	mark.sylphx.com/svg?repos=owner/repo

Or paste any of those URLs into the studio and edit it there.

Why Mark

• Free, with no token. You never paste a personal access token. Live cards read public GitHub data on the server, with caching.
• Never a broken image. Unknown parameters fall back to defaults. If GitHub is slow or rate limited, you get the last good card; if there is none yet, a calm "temporarily unavailable" card, never a broken-image icon.
• Fast. Rendering takes microseconds, not milliseconds (see Performance). Static images are immutable and cacheable for a year, and .svg URLs are served from the edge. Live cards are cached for hours.
• Pretty by default. Every default is designed. Themes work across banners, badges and cards.
• One host for everything instead of five services with five different uptimes.
• Safe to embed. All text is escaped, colors are validated, and every SVG response forbids scripts.
• Open source (MIT), one Rust binary. Run your own instance with a single docker run.

Reference

Banner — /api/v1/mark/hero

Param	Values	Default
text, desc	Title and subtitle. Use -nl- for a new line.	—
type	Style: waving aurora mesh spotlight grid minimal terminal transparent	waving
theme	dark light ocean sunset forest grape mono paper	dark
color	One colour, or gradient stops like 0:0F172A,50:5B8CFF,100:FF8A3D (used when no theme is set; a dark first stop becomes the background). gradient picks a theme from the text.	—
layout	default (centered) left	default
animation	ambient (the light drifts) fade rise type (play once) none	ambient
font	sans mono	sans
width, height	Pixels, up to 1600 × 900. Type scales with the canvas (1280×640 makes a social preview).	880, 220

transparent draws text only, in GitHub's text colours for the viewer's light or dark scheme. Names from earlier versions (plasma, constellation, tokyonight, glitch, plate, …) still render: each maps to the closest style, theme, motion or layout above.

Badge — /badge/{label}-{message}-{color}, /static/v1

Uses shields.io static-badge syntax: -- is a dash, __ is an underscore, _ is a space, and {message}-{color} alone drops the label.

Param	Values
style	flat flat-square plastic for-the-badge social
logo	Any Simple Icons slug (rust, github, npm…) or a base64 data: image
logoColor, color, labelColor	shields color names, hex, rgb(), hsl()
label	Overrides the label from the path

Score — /api/v1/mark/score

label, value, max (default 100), style, logo, color (overrides the automatic grade), theme.

Typing — /typing (also /?lines=)

The same parameters as readme-typing-svg: lines (separated by ;), font, weight, size, color, background, center, vCenter, multiline, width, height, duration, pause, repeat, random, letterSpacing, separator.

Icons — /icons?i=

i (or icons): comma-separated skill-icons ids or Simple Icons slugs. theme is dark or light. perline is 1–50 (default 15). The native row is /api/v1/mark/strip?icons=….

GitHub cards — /api, /api/top-langs, /streak, /api/pin, /trophy

github-readme-stats parameters: username, theme, show_icons, hide, hide_title, hide_rank, hide_border, border_radius, title_color, text_color, icon_color, bg_color, border_color, custom_title, card_width, layout (normal compact donut donut-vertical pie), langs_count, exclude_repo. The native routes are /api/v1/card/{stats|langs|streak|repo|stars}. Trophies (/trophy, or /?username=) take github-profile-trophy's theme, column, row, margin-w, margin-h, no-bg, no-frame, title and rank.

Live cards are cached on the server (about 4 hours) and at the edge. They are served stale while they refresh, and stale when GitHub is unavailable.

Profile card and deploy mark

/api/v1/mark/profile?text=Name&desc=Tagline, with theme, color, type (an art background), width and height. /api/v1/mark/deploy?service=name renders a "deployed on Sylphx" badge.

Append .svg to any image path (/badge/a-b-c.svg, /api/v1/mark/hero.svg?…) and it is edge-cached by file type. The full vocabulary is at /api/v1/catalog.

Performance

In-process render latency (release build, 400 runs per URL, p50). The Bench workflow re-measures on every change to main and publishes the table to its job summary:

Image	Size	p50
Badge (/badge/build-passing-brightgreen)	1.3 KB	8 µs
Banner, waving, 880×220	2.5 KB	20 µs
Banner, aurora, 1200×320	2.6 KB	17 µs
Tech strip, 8 icons	23 KB	41 µs
Profile card	2.0 KB	11 µs

Live readback on 2026-09-25 from a server in Europe with scripts/measure-live.sh (15 requests per URL, p50). "Wait" is the time from sending the request to the first byte, not counting DNS, TCP or TLS:

URL	Wait	cf-cache-status
/badge/build-passing-brightgreen.svg	31 ms	HIT
/api/v1/mark/hero.svg?type=waving&text=…	32 ms	HIT
/badge/build-passing-brightgreen	63 ms	DYNAMIC (origin)
/api/v1/mark/strip?icons=rust,ts,docker	57 ms	DYNAMIC (origin)

Use the .svg form to be served from the edge. Both forms return identical bytes with a strong ETag, and If-None-Match returns 304.

Self-hosting

docker build --build-arg GIT_SHA="$(git rev-parse HEAD)" -t mark .
docker run --rm -p 8787:8787 mark               # → http://localhost:8787

Variable	Default	Notes
PORT / HOST	8787 / 0.0.0.0
PUBLIC_BASE_URL	derived	The host the studio writes into copied URLs
GITHUB_TOKEN or GITHUB_TOKENS	—	Optional. Raises the GitHub rate limit for live cards; comma-separate several tokens to rotate them.
DEFAULT_CREDIT	0	1 adds a small watermark
RUST_LOG	mark=info

Development: cargo run, cargo test. After reviewing a visual change, refresh the snapshots with UPDATE_SNAPSHOTS=1 cargo test --test visual_snapshots.

Credits

Mark stands on ideas from shields.io, capsule-render, readme-typing-svg, skill-icons, github-readme-stats and github-readme-streak-stats, and speaks their URL formats so you can switch without rewriting. Brand icons come from Simple Icons (CC0). Brand names and logos are trademarks of their owners; their use here does not imply endorsement.

Decisions: docs/vision.md · docs/capabilities.md · ADR-0005.

License

MIT © Sylphx