The order is:

    LLM issues tool call to read high res image ->
    harness sends high res image to server ->
    server downsizes it to 800x800 (blurry) ->
    LLM issues bash command (e.g. `convert`) to crop a small subimage (e.g. 600x600) from the high res image ->
    LLM issues tool call to read subimage ->
    harness sends subimage to server ->
    server does not resize the subimage because it is small already, so it is not blurry when finally ingested by the LLM

They process the original image file with Python on the local device. (And I've seen the web chats do this with their "computer use" features too.)

The really wild one is even blind models will do this and they'll try to run stats on the pixels to figure out what it looks like... the even wilder thing is that it kind of works!

They’re not talking about zooming, hence the quotes.