How to Drive a Developer Insane with AI File Uploads
1 min read
How to Drive a Developer Insane with AI File Uploads
Since yesterday, I've been locked in a gladiator match against what should have been a trivial task: uploading an image created by ChatGPT into my own note system.
Here's what I was promised:
- "You can send simple binary files!"
- "You can use base64!"
- "We'll give you a
download_link
for any generated file!"
Here's what I got:
- Binary? Always empty.
- Base64? Broken. Corrupted. Useless.
download_link
? Refused to generate it, even though it's in their own spec.
I tried using every officially documented format: openaiFileIdRefs
, multipart/form-data
, inline base64 blobs... Nothing worked. Every call hit a wall of broken tooling, mismatched validation, or missing fields.
I finally hacked my way around the problem by manually uploading the image, extracting a temporary signed URL, and begging the API to accept it—which only happened after patching my server to stop rejecting valid OpenAI schema fields.
The Moral?
This is how you break a developer:
- Promise everything.
- Deliver almost nothing.
- Gaslight them with your own documentation.
If you ever wondered how to enrage someone building cool stuff on top of your platform: this is the playbook.
You're welcome.
✌️ This confession is now immortalized at goker.me/ai-file-upload-madness