The Open Graph share card

The URL

/beacon/:username/og-image

It returns a PNG - image/png, 1200×630 - and asks to be cached for an hour.

You probably do not need it

The Beacon page already references this image in its own Open Graph tags. If you are linking to somebody’s Beacon from a page, a post or a message, the unfurler will find the card on its own and you should link to the page rather than to the image.

Fetch it directly only if you are building a preview yourself and want the card without parsing the page for it.

What it draws

• The freelancer’s display name.
• Their published percentage and status.
• Their next opening date, when there is one.

When they are away it draws their away label instead, and no percentage and no date at all - because an away Beacon reads no published figure, so there is none to draw. A card showing “95% booked” beside “On leave” is exactly the contradiction this route is built to avoid.

It answers the same way the page does

The card is generated by asking the same function the Beacon page asks, so it inherits the page’s answers rather than restating them:

• A username nobody owns is a 404, exactly as the page is.
• An account that has never published is a 404 here, even though their page is a healthy 200 - there is no status to draw.
• An away account that has never published does render a card, because being away is itself something to say.

The practical consequence: treat a 404 from this URL as “no card to show”, never as “no such freelancer”. Check the Beacon URL for that.

The date on the card

It is the freelancer’s calendar date, written in the same unambiguous long form the rest of the public surface uses, and it is not converted into anyone else’s timezone. See Dates and timezones.