What is background-remove?

An image-processing tool that cuts the background away from a photo or graphic and saves the subject on a transparent background. It can use an AI model for complex images or a simpler method for clean white backgrounds.

Use it to isolate products, people, icons, or other subjects, including processing multiple images in a folder. It outputs PNG or WebP files.

It avoids manual selection and erasing around a subject. The result can be placed over different backgrounds without a visible rectangle.

background-remove — Skill for Claude Code by michaelboeding/skills

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add michaelboeding/skills --skill background-remove

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/michaelboeding/skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 46 skills, 75 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/michaelboeding/skills/background-remove/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/michaelboeding/skills/background-remove)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/michaelboeding/skills/background-remove"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/michaelboeding/skills/background-remove/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/michaelboeding/skills/background-remove"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/michaelboeding/skills/background-remove.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 57 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,444 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00057	$0.01444
Opus 5.5	$0.00023	$0.00578
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00011	$0.00289
Haiku 4.5	$0.00006	$0.00144

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 418541707d73, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

background-remove scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/background_remove.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/background-remove/SKILL.md · 207 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 207 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Background Remove Skill

Remove backgrounds from images using AI (rembg/U2-Net) or built-in methods.

Output: PNG or WebP with transparent background.

Quick Examples

User Says	What Happens
"Remove the background from this photo"	AI removes background, outputs PNG
"Make this image transparent"	Removes background, preserves subject
"Cut out the product from this image"	Isolates subject with clean edges
"Remove backgrounds from all images in /photos"	Batch processes multiple images
"Quick background removal, white background"	Uses fast built-in method

Prerequisites

rembg - AI-based background removal (recommended)

pip install rembg
# Or with GPU acceleration (faster, requires CUDA)
pip install rembg[gpu]

Pillow - Required for image processing
```
pip install Pillow
```

The first run will download the U2-Net model (~170MB) which is cached for future use.

Methods

Method	Description	Best For
rembg	AI-based using U2-Net model	Complex images, photos, products (default)
builtin	White-to-transparent conversion	Icons, graphics with clean white backgrounds

Workflow

Step 1: Gather Requirements (REQUIRED)

Use the AskUserQuestion tool for each question. Ask ONE question at a time.

Q1: Image Source

"Which image(s) should I remove the background from?

Please provide the file path or paste the image."

Wait for response.

Q2: Method (Optional)

"Which removal method?

AI (rembg) - Best quality, works on any image (default)

Built-in - Faster, best for white backgrounds"

Wait for response. Default to AI if user doesn't specify.

Q3: Output Location (Optional)

"Where should I save the result?

Same location with _nobg suffix (default)

Custom path"

Wait for response.

Step 2: Execute Background Removal

Single image:

python3 ${SKILL_PATH}/skills/background-remove/scripts/background_remove.py \
  -i "/path/to/image.jpg" \
  -o "/path/to/output.png"

Read the full file on GitHub · 207 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

scripts/background_remove.py 11 KB runs code

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 207 lines · 57 tokens per session scan A 418541707d73

Subscribe to this mod's changes

background-remove is a skill published in the GitHub repository michaelboeding/skills (30 stars, last pushed 27d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 57 tokens to every session and 1,444 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Creative and media

background-remove next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
background-removemichaelboeding/skills	Skill	30	27d ago	MIT	A	57	Claude Code
imagegenopenai/codex	Skill	134k	today	Apache-2.0	A	113	Codex
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners	Skill	79k	2d ago	MIT	A	200	Claude Code, Codex
playwright-climicrosoft/playwright	Skill	100k	today	Apache-2.0	A	19	Claude Code
browser-automationopenclaw/openclaw	Skill	394k	today	MIT	A	36	Claude Code
systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers	Skill	315k	6d ago	MIT	A	21	Claude Code
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	today	MIT	A	95	Claude Code