A studio that checks the route before it spends your key
Most image portals ask for a key and then leave you guessing why a generation failed. Excavationpro Image Studio does the opposite. It opens with a health panel that pings each provider's cheapest read-only endpoint, shows whether that route is reachable from your browser, and marks providers that still need a key or a CORS proxy. The check is deliberately small: a models list, an account endpoint, or a public model catalog. No image request is sent, and no generation credits are spent.
This is a workshop tool, not a promise that every vendor will work from every browser. Some providers block cross-origin requests. Some require a key before they will answer anything. Some are free but rate-limited. The panel reports those states instead of pretending they are all the same. You can recheck at any time, and the Generate button runs the same preflight before it launches a request.
What the health panel is actually checking
The check is intentionally boring. It requests the smallest useful answer a provider exposes: a models endpoint, an account endpoint, or a public model catalog. A successful HTTP response means the route is reachable. A failure can mean a bad key, a CORS block, a rate limit, or a provider outage. The panel shows the HTTP status and a short note so the failure has a shape instead of a shrug.
Google Imagen is checked through its models endpoint with your key. OpenAI, Stability, Venice, OpenRouter, and Together are checked through their model/account surfaces. Pollinations is checked without a key because it is the free route. Replicate and fal.ai are marked as proxy routes; if no proxy URL is configured, the panel says proxy needed rather than pretending the provider is down. A custom OpenAI-compatible base URL is checked at its /models path when one is configured.
Why the key stays in the browser
There is no account on this page, no server-side key vault, and no upload of your prompt to Excavationpro. The app stores keys in the browser's session storage by default. It offers persistent local storage only as an explicit opt-in, with a warning. Requests go from your browser to the provider you chose. That means the vendor's terms, retention policy, price, and acceptable-use rules apply to you, not to this domain.
This is also why the health panel cannot magically make a broken route work. A key can be valid and still fail because the vendor blocks browser origins. A free route can be online and still be slow or rate-limited. A paid route can be healthy and still return a content-policy refusal. The panel is a preflight, not a guarantee of output.
How to use it without wasting credits
- Open the studio, choose a provider, and read the health panel before pasting a key.
- Use Recheck after changing a key or a proxy URL.
- Start with the provider you already have a key for; Pollinations may now require billing, and the panel will show that honestly.
- Paste a paid key only when you are ready to test that provider's own billing and policy.
- If the panel says proxy needed, configure the optional CORS Worker in the app's Settings instead of blaming the key.
- Keep prompts short for the first test; provider errors are easier to read than a long failed batch.
What the ads pay for
Excavationpro is an independent music and writing project. Ads on this page help cover domain, hosting, and the time it takes to maintain a working tool. They do not unlock the studio, change a provider result, or buy a better model. There are no paid rankings inside the panel, no fake scarcity, and no “click this ad to continue” gate. The tool is free to use; ads are separate from the tool and are loaded only after the page's consent banner is handled.
The ad placements sit outside the iframe, after substantive page content and after the studio. They are not inside the Generate flow, not over the image, and not disguised as buttons. If an ad looks like part of the studio, it is not ours. Use the provider's own site for billing or account questions.
Limits and honest caveats
This page does not host a model and does not proxy every provider by default. It cannot guarantee uptime, output quality, or that a vendor will keep its endpoint stable. Some providers change CORS rules without notice. Some require payment before any useful test. Some image models refuse prompts for reasons that have nothing to do with this page.
Nothing here is medical, legal, or financial advice. Generated images may carry the provider's license terms; check them before commercial use. The studio is a client, not a rights clearinghouse. The free listen catalog and the image tool are separate: listening does not require a key, and image generation does not grant music rights.
A green dot means the route answered. It does not mean the picture will be good, the key is unlimited, or the model is honest. Those are different tests.