README.md

---
title: BLIP Image Captioning API
emoji: 🖼️
colorFrom: blue
colorTo: gray
sdk: docker
app_port: 7860
---

# BLIP Image Captioning API

FastAPI service for `Salesforce/blip-image-captioning-large`, packaged for Hugging Face Docker Spaces.

Set a Hugging Face Space secret named `API_KEY` to protect the caption endpoint.

## Endpoints

- `GET /health`
- `POST /caption`

## Example request

```bash
curl -X POST "http://localhost:7860/caption" \
  -H "x-api-key: your-secret-key" \
  -F "image=@example.jpg" \
  -F "min_new_tokens=5" \
  -F "max_new_tokens=20"
```

## Local run

```bash
docker build -t blip-large-api .
docker run -p 7860:7860 -e API_KEY=your-secret-key blip-large-api
```