The Links Manager plugin is literally one line of code to enable, so that is going to be added in a future version.

I definitely want to get the live preview in the editor working, but also wanted to get a working version in general handled as well, so this version with the link got put in place for version 1.0.0

The images, just need to set an image on your link and WordPress internal handles the rest for you, nothing I need to change there.

Loving the feedback and ideas and looking forward to how to potentially do a little more with this.