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title FlashPaste use cases — pasting images into Claude Code, Codex CLI, Aider on Linux
description Concrete walkthroughs for the most common FlashPaste workflows. Pasting screenshots into Claude Code on Ubuntu 24.04, Codex CLI on Fedora 40, Aider on Debian 13, agent-driven captures via MCP, and area screenshots with flashpaste-shoot.
keywords
paste screenshot into claude code ubuntu
codex cli image paste fedora
aider image paste debian
flashpaste mcp screenshot
terminal ai screenshot workflow
claude code linux workflow
flashpaste-shoot area capture
last_updated 2026-05-19
canonical https://github.com/NagyVikt/flashpaste/blob/main/docs/use-cases.md

Use cases

Concrete walkthroughs for the most common FlashPaste workflows. Each section is self-contained — pick the one that matches your stack and your task.

Pasting a screenshot into Claude Code on Ubuntu 24.04

The reference workflow. Tested daily on a real Ubuntu 24.04 / kitty / tmux / Claude Code setup.

  1. Open kitty. Inside it, start tmux. Inside tmux, run claude to attach to Claude Code.
  2. Position the GNOME window you want to screenshot.
  3. Press PrtScr. GNOME's screenshot UI appears. Click "Screenshot" or hit Enter to capture full screen — the PNG lands in ~/Pictures/Screenshots/.
  4. Right-click anywhere in the tmux pane → Paste.
  5. The image attaches to your Claude Code prompt in ~120 ms (Tier 1) or ~15 ms (Tier 3).

Variations:

  • Use Ctrl+Shift+PrtScr (kitty binding from the snippet) to capture via the XDG portal directly into the daemon — faster path, no GNOME UI involvement.
  • Use Ctrl+Alt+PrtScr for the area-picker variant.
  • Use Ctrl+Alt+V to force the image-paste path when you suspect clipboard text is shadowing it.

Pasting screenshots into Codex CLI on Fedora 40

Identical to the Ubuntu flow. Fedora 40 ships a recent enough ydotool that the socket-path drop-in is a no-op, but installing it via install.sh is harmless.

# Bootstrap install (no apt on Fedora)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NagyVikt/flashpaste/main/bootstrap.sh | bash

# Required deps via dnf
sudo dnf install wl-clipboard xclip xsel ydotool tmux kitty

# Inside kitty, start tmux, then:
codex
# (Codex CLI starts. PrtScr → right-click → Paste works identically.)

Pasting screenshots into Aider on Debian 13

Debian 13 (Trixie) is binary-compatible with the Ubuntu .deb:

curl -fsSL -o /tmp/flashpaste.deb \
  https://github.com/NagyVikt/flashpaste/releases/latest/download/flashpaste_all.deb
sudo apt install /tmp/flashpaste.deb

Aider accepts image paste via the same Ctrl-V sentinel Claude Code uses. The standard FlashPaste right-click → Paste flow attaches the image directly.

Fast captures with flashpaste-shoot

GNOME's screenshot UI is good but slow (3–4 clicks, ~3 seconds). flashpaste-shoot is a Rust binary that captures via the XDG Desktop Portal in ~250 ms and stages directly into the daemon (or ~/Pictures/Screenshots/ if the daemon isn't running).

flashpaste-shoot                 # full screen, immediate
flashpaste-shoot --interactive   # area picker
flashpaste-shoot --print-path    # write PNG path to stdout
flashpaste-shoot --no-daemon     # skip daemon staging, just write to disk

Wire to a kitty keybinding (already in examples/kitty.conf.snippet):

map ctrl+shift+print launch --type=background -- flashpaste-shoot
map ctrl+alt+print   launch --type=background -- flashpaste-shoot --interactive

Agent-driven screenshots via MCP

flashpaste-mcp exposes clipboard + screenshot tools to LLM agents over the stdio MCP transport. Useful for "take a screenshot of the current screen and analyze it" loops where the agent is driving instead of the user.

Register the MCP server with your agent (Claude Code, Codex, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "flashpaste": {
      "command": "flashpaste-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Tools the agent can call:

  • screenshot — capture full-screen via the XDG portal, returns base64 PNG
  • screenshot_area — interactive area capture
  • clipboard_read — read current clipboard (text or image)
  • clipboard_write — write text to clipboard
  • paste_into_pane — inject paste into a specific tmux pane

Status: experimental. The contract is stable enough to depend on but the tool schema may evolve.

Multi-paste the same screenshot

The dispatcher's recursion guard auto-clears after 2 seconds, so you can paste the same screenshot multiple times into different panes:

  1. PrtScr once.
  2. Right-click pane 1 → Paste. Image attaches.
  3. Move to pane 2. Right-click → Paste. Image attaches again from the same source.
  4. Repeat as many times as you need until the screenshot ages past the 30 s auto-pickup window.

Drive FlashPaste from a script

# Stage a PNG into the clipboard from anywhere
~/.local/bin/clipboard-set.sh < /path/to/image.png

# Read current clipboard text
~/.local/bin/get-clipboard-text.sh

# Take a screenshot, get the path
PNG=$(flashpaste-shoot --print-path --no-daemon)
echo "Saved to: $PNG"

# Force a paste into a specific tmux pane
flashpaste-trigger '%3'   # or fall back: tmux-paste-dispatch.sh '%3'

Combining FlashPaste with claude-mem or other Claude Code plugins

FlashPaste lives at the clipboard layer; Claude Code plugins live at the agent layer. They compose cleanly — no conflicts. A typical flow:

  1. PrtScr (capture)
  2. Right-click → Paste (FlashPaste delivers the image to Claude Code)
  3. Claude Code analyzes the image (agent layer)
  4. claude-mem saves the observation (memory layer)

Each layer is independent.