It's done using escape codes (\033}). tycat/tyls/ty* only outputs escape codes. Terminology handles them and display the images…

In tycat.c, you can see some code like: if (mode == CENTER) snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "%c}ic#%i;%i;%s", 0x1b, w, h, path);

Because the path is given, it won't work remotely.

find | xargs tycat should work but doesn't (one more bug to fix :D ).