Feature Request: Top-level generateImage() and embed() activity functions

[threepointone]

(written with some help from opus, as obvious)

Summary

TanStack AI has great adapter infrastructure for image generation and embeddings — BaseImageAdapter, provider-specific adapters like OpenAIImageAdapter, GeminiImageAdapter, GrokImageAdapter, and embedding support in several providers. But there's no top-level activity function to actually use them, the way chat() works for text adapters.

We'd love to see generateImage() and embed() (or similar) added as first-class activity functions alongside chat() and summarize().

Prior art: Vercel AI SDK

The Vercel AI SDK already has this exact pattern and it works really well. Their core API includes:

• generateImage() — top-level function: takes a model + prompt, returns generated images
• embed() — single value embedding
• embedMany() — batch embeddings
• transcribe() — audio transcription
• generateSpeech() — text-to-speech
• experimental_generateVideo() — video generation

TanStack AI already follows a very similar architecture (top-level activity functions + provider adapters), so the shape of these APIs would map naturally. For example, the Vercel embed() API is clean and simple:

import { embed } from "ai";

const { embedding } = await embed({
  model: openai.embeddingModel("text-embedding-3-small"),
  value: "sunny day at the beach",
});

The TanStack equivalent would look something like:

import { embed } from "@tanstack/ai";

const { embedding } = await embed({
  adapter: myEmbeddingAdapter,
  value: "sunny day at the beach",
});

Why this matters to us

We're building @cloudflare/tanstack-ai (PR #389) — the canonical package for using TanStack AI with Cloudflare Workers AI and AI Gateway. It wraps all the TanStack AI provider adapters to route through Cloudflare's infrastructure.

We've written Workers AI adapters for image generation and embeddings that work at the low level (calling Cloudflare's env.AI.run() binding), but we're currently holding them back from our public API because there's no TanStack AI activity function to plug them into.

Right now, users of our package can do:

import { createWorkersAiChat } from "@cloudflare/tanstack-ai";
import { chat, toHttpResponse } from "@tanstack/ai";

const adapter = createWorkersAiChat("@cf/meta/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct", {
  binding: env.AI,
});

// This works great — chat() is a top-level activity function
return toHttpResponse(chat({ adapter, messages, stream: true }));

But for images and embeddings, there's no equivalent:

import { createWorkersAiImage } from "@cloudflare/tanstack-ai";
// import { generateImage } from "@tanstack/ai";  <-- doesn't exist yet

const adapter = createWorkersAiImage("@cf/black-forest-labs/flux-1-schnell", {
  binding: env.AI,
});

// No top-level function to use the adapter with.
// Users would have to call adapter.generate() directly,
// which breaks the TanStack AI abstraction pattern.

What exists today in TanStack AI

The building blocks are already in place:

• BaseImageAdapter is available in @tanstack/ai/adapters (landed in 0.4.2)
• OpenAIImageAdapter, GeminiImageAdapter, GrokImageAdapter all exist
• Several providers have embedding support at the adapter level
• OpenAITranscriptionAdapter, OpenAITTSAdapter, OpenAIVideoAdapter exist
• The chat() and summarize() patterns provide a clear blueprint

It's really just the orchestration layer (the top-level functions) that's missing.

What we're requesting

generateImage()

A top-level activity function for image generation, analogous to chat():

import { generateImage } from "@tanstack/ai";

const result = await generateImage({
  adapter,
  prompt: "A sunset over the ocean",
});

embed() / embedMany()

Top-level activity functions for embeddings:

import { embed, embedMany } from "@tanstack/ai";

const { embedding } = await embed({
  adapter,
  value: "Text to embed",
});

const { embeddings } = await embedMany({
  adapter,
  values: ["Text 1", "Text 2"],
});

transcribe(), generateSpeech(), generateVideo()

For completeness, given that the adapter classes already exist:

import { transcribe, generateSpeech } from "@tanstack/ai";

React hooks (stretch goal)

Eventually, hooks in @tanstack/ai-react (like useGenerateImage()) would be amazing, following the useChat() pattern.

We're happy to help

We'd love to contribute implementation work on this if that'd be useful. We have a good understanding of the adapter pattern from building our Cloudflare wrappers, and we have real provider implementations (Workers AI) ready to exercise these APIs the moment they land. Happy to pair on design, write the implementation, add tests — whatever's most helpful. Just let us know how you'd like to approach it.

[nikas-belogolov]

Isn't there already a generateImage() function? Could you please clarify what are you asking for

[threepointone]

I think I got this wrong, while using an older version opus didn't find it, and I didn't notice it when I updated.

[nikas-belogolov]

So you only need embed() / embedMany() and the react hooks? I can work on those

[threepointone]

yup I think only those. I found and updated my lib to use generateImage and the rest.
also i's not urgent, I'll leave this up for posterity.

[nikas-belogolov]

embed()/embedMany() activities with gemini adapter are now almost complete in this PR: #291, just need some testing to be added

useGenerateImage() and other such react hooks will require maybe some shared AI client between all hooks to reduce boilerplate