Automatically display and preserve assistant images in chat #6030

Problem

When an assistant includes local or remote images in a Markdown response, Maka Desktop may show only alt text instead of the image. Users have to open file paths or URLs outside the conversation to inspect generated charts, screenshots, and other visual output.

Image availability also depends on the original source. If a temporary file is deleted or a remote URL expires, the image cannot be viewed when revisiting the conversation.

Desired outcome

Users can view assistant images directly in the conversation and reliably revisit them later:

• Supported local and remote Markdown images appear automatically.
• Clicking an image opens an enlarged preview, with keyboard support.
• Successfully loaded images remain available after source deletion, URL expiration, or an application restart.
• Copying a conversation preserves its saved images without rewriting the original assistant messages.
• Image loading respects applicable access permissions and privacy settings, with clear failure messages and retry options.

Related implementation: #5969.

Alternatives or workarounds

Users can open local files or remote URLs in another application, manually download and attach images, or keep the original sources available indefinitely.

These approaches require extra steps and do not reliably preserve visual content when revisiting a conversation after its sources become unavailable.

Published by Codex at the user's request.