# Daily visual inspiration in Slack

> Start every workday with a fresh, hand-picked photo dropped into your team's Slack channel, photographer credit included.

- Workflow type: code
- Services: Pexels, Slack Bot
- Categories: Marketing, Personal Productivity
- Published: 2026-05-04

## What it does

- Posts a hand-picked image from the Pexels editorial feed into a Slack channel every weekday morning.
- Uses the photo's caption as the headline so the team gets a moment of context, not just a thumbnail.
- Credits the photographer with a link back to their Pexels profile, which keeps you compliant with Pexels' usage rules.
- Runs on a schedule you control, so the rhythm matches your team's actual workday.

## What you'll need

- A free Pexels account so we can pull fresh curated images each morning.
- A Slack workspace where you can install our bot and invite it to one channel.
- A channel for the daily drop, like #design-inspo or #brand-mood.

## Prompt

Build a code-style workflow that posts a fresh visual inspiration image into a Slack channel every weekday morning. The audience is a design and brand team, so the value is the freshness and reliability of the cadence.

Trigger: cron, Monday through Friday at 8:30am America/New_York.

Step 1. Call Pexels Curated Photos with per_page=10 to fetch the current top of the editorial feed. Deterministically pick the first photo in the returned array (the top-ranked curated pick) so the result is repeatable and there is no randomness inside the workflow.

Step 2. Call Slack Bot Send a Message to post to a configured channel (default: #design-inspo). Format the message so that:

a) The photo's src.large URL appears on its own line so Slack auto-unfurls a large image preview.

b) The photo's alt text is used as the headline, formatted in Slack mrkdwn bold (*like this*). If alt text is empty, fall back to a generic line like 'Today's pick from Pexels'.

c) A footer line credits the photographer with their name linked to their Pexels profile URL (the photo's photographer_url field) and includes a 'Photo from Pexels' link back to https://www.pexels.com. This attribution is required by the Pexels API guidelines (https://www.pexels.com/api/documentation/#guidelines) and must be present on every post.

No AI step is needed. Both nodes are deterministic API calls with structured inputs and outputs.

User-configurable inputs to expose: the target Slack channel (default #design-inspo), the cron schedule and time zone (default Mon to Fri 08:30 America/New_York), and an optional override for the fallback headline text.

Integrations: Pexels (Curated Photos operation) and Slack Bot (Send a Message operation). Use the Slack Bot integration, not the Slack user integration, because this is an automated workspace post that should appear as a bot identity.

## How to customize

- Change the time or days of the week so it lands when your team is actually online.
- Swap the channel, or duplicate the workflow to post to multiple channels (designers, brand, marketing).
- Switch from the editorial feed to a keyword search if you want photos on a specific theme like nature, architecture, or color of the month.

## FAQ

### Do I have to pay for the images?

No. Every photo Pexels serves is free for personal and commercial use under their license. The workflow only pulls public, royalty-free images.

### Do I have to credit the photographer?

Yes, Pexels requires it, and the workflow handles it automatically. Each post includes the photographer's name linked to their Pexels profile plus a link back to Pexels.

### Can I post to more than one channel?

Yes. The easiest path is to duplicate the workflow with a different channel set, but you can also extend a single run to fan out the same image to several channels.

### Will the same image ever repeat?

Pexels refreshes its curated feed often, so repeats are rare in practice. If you want guaranteed novelty, point the workflow at a keyword search with a rotating theme instead of the editorial feed.

### What time zone does the schedule use?

You choose. The default is 8:30am Eastern on weekdays, but you can change the time, time zone, and days when you set up the workflow.

Use this prompt in General Input: https://www.generalinput.com/prompts/daily-visual-inspiration-in-slack