The welcome image was inlined as a ~2.6MB data URL in the card, bloating every public-profile fetch. Now it's uploaded to S3-compatible object storage and the profile carries just a URL (profile JSON dropped ~2.6MB -> ~575 bytes). - ObjectStore: add put_object(key, bytes, content_type) + public_url(key). R2Store uploads via a presigned PUT; InMemoryStore keeps bytes for tests. - R2Config: add public_base (R2_PUBLIC_BASE); falls back to endpoint/bucket. - card_service::set_welcome: decode the generated image, upload to welcome/<id>.<ext>, store its public URL as welcome.imageUrl. - docker-compose: add MinIO (S3-compatible, drop-in for R2) + a one-shot that creates a public-read cardclaws-assets bucket for local dev. - web: PublicProfile.welcome.imageUrl (renamed from imageDataUrl); WelcomeHero unchanged. astro check clean. Verified live against MinIO: real Gemini image uploaded, served publicly (HTTP 200, image/png, 1024x1024), profile payload now tiny. Same code path runs against Cloudflare R2 in production (endpoint/creds/public_base only). Gate green (118 tests). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <[email protected]>