run-llama/llama_index · error · ValueError

No image found in node.

Error message

No image found in node.

What it means

ImageNode.resolve_image() tries three image sources in order — embedded base64 (image), image_path, image_url — and raises ValueError('No image found in node.') when none of the three fields is set. The node exists but carries no image payload at all.

Source

Thrown at llama-index-core/llama_index/core/schema.py:911

    def class_name(cls) -> str:
        return "ImageNode"

    def resolve_image(self) -> ImageType:
        """Resolve an image such that PIL can read it."""
        if self.image is not None:
            import base64

            return BytesIO(base64.b64decode(self.image))
        elif self.image_path is not None:
            return self.image_path
        elif self.image_url is not None:
            # load image from URL
            import requests

            response = requests.get(self.image_url, timeout=(60, 60))
            return BytesIO(response.content)
        else:
            raise ValueError("No image found in node.")

    @property
    def hash(self) -> str:
        """Get hash of node."""
        # doc identity depends on if image, image_path, or image_url is set
        image_str = self.image or "None"
        image_path_str = self.image_path or "None"
        image_url_str = self.image_url or "None"
        image_text = self.text or "None"
        doc_identity = f"{image_str}-{image_path_str}-{image_url_str}-{image_text}"
        return str(sha256(doc_identity.encode("utf-8", "surrogatepass")).hexdigest())

    def get_content_blocks(
        self, metadata_mode: MetadataMode = MetadataMode.NONE
    ) -> list[BaseContentBlock]:
        """Get content blocks for the node."""
        from llama_index.core.base.llms.types import ImageBlock

View on GitHub (pinned to afd0fef371)

Solutions

1. Pass exactly one of image (base64 str), image_path, or image_url when constructing the ImageNode
2. Guard with a check on the three fields before calling resolve_image()
3. If images are optional in your pipeline, skip resolve_image for image-less nodes instead of erroring

Example fix

# before
node = ImageNode(text="chart description")
img = node.resolve_image()  # ValueError

# after
node = ImageNode(image_path="/data/chart.png", text="chart description")
img = node.resolve_image()

if not (node.image or node.image_path or node.image_url):
    raise ValueError("ImageNode needs one of image/image_path/image_url")

def has_image_payload(node) -> bool:
    return bool(getattr(node, "image", None) or getattr(node, "image_path", None) or getattr(node, "image_url", None))

When it happens

Trigger: Constructing ImageNode() (or a subclass) without image/image_path/image_url, or creating one only with text/metadata, then calling resolve_image() — typically inside a multi-modal retrieval or LLM image-input flow.

Common situations: Building ImageNode placeholders in custom multi-modal pipelines; nodes created from documents where the image extraction step silently failed and only text was attached.

Related errors

• Node must be a TextNode to get text.
• The specified file path is not an accessible image
• The specified URL is not an accessible image
• No image found in the chat message!
• A retrieved image must have image_path or image_url specifie

AI-assisted analysis of run-llama/llama_index@afd0fef371 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b5e4ad77f985de14. Report an issue: GitHub.