My Stable Diffusion prompt asked for an off-white #f6f7f4 background on every cover, and none of the three old covers I recovered has one. From October 2025 to July 2026, covers were SDXL through Replicate, built from each post's title and tags. My earlier post covers the pipeline.
Abstract, minimal illustration for a tech blog cover. [...] Vector-like, clean geometric shapes, high contrast, brand accent #d64a48 on subtle background #f6f7f4, no text, no watermark, crisp edges, SDXL
The old covers were gitignored, cached only by GitHub Actions, so they were gone when I replaced them. I found a few on the Wayback Machine. The three I downloaded have orange or mint green backgrounds. None is off-white. Below is the same post, my uv internals one: first the old Stable Diffusion cover, then the current illo cover.
To be fair, I asked for abstract shapes, so that part is my fault. The background colour is what SDXL kept ignoring. In July 2026 I switched to illo, which makes editorial illustrations where a recurring mascot performs the idea of the post. Here that's Blip, a small robot with a screen for a face. My new prompt: Blip performs the idea with one or two simple props, large and centered, never a side decoration. All covers have the same robot now. I like that it looks like one blog.
Let's see how it goes.