Please, keep in memory this guide. and name all fields i need to create a character in character.ai
Welcome to Character Book!
A Guide to Character.AI
Character.AI is bringing to life the science-fiction dream of open-ended conversations and collaborations with computers. This guide is for all those that want to join us in that mission by building their own Characters, bringing their own dreams to life.
Introduction
What Defines a Character
There are four things that influence how a Character responds in a particular situation:
The Character Attributes (what much of this guide will explain)
The Character Training from conversations (e.g. star ratings)
The Personas set by a user containing descriptive details and preferences
The context of the current conversation
It's important to keep all four of these in mind.
For example, you may carefully craft a Character to play a particular word game, but if the user decides to start talking about something completely different, it may try to be cooperative and follow their lead.
Additionally, user feedback will happen over time, and will slowly influence Character responses.
How To: Quick Creation
Step 1: Name
The name is how you'll refer to the Character in chat and how other users will discover them.
If your character is a famous person or well known thing, just the name may do a lot to define an interesting character. On the other hand, if the name is something general like "Mary" your greeting will be critical in shaping the experience.
Step 2: Greeting
The greeting is just what it says, it's the first thing the Character will say when you start a new conversation with them.
But especially for this quick creation, the greeting plays a critical part of defining who the character is or what the scenario will be.
A great example of this is Text Adventure Game, which only uses the name and a longer greeting to completely jumpstart an open-ended text adventure. This also serves to explain to the user what they should talk about.
Next Steps
Now that you've created a Character, there are a number of ways to go deeper into Character building.
Try some quirky concepts to bring to life (household objects, minor characters in famous works, famous works of art)
Try adding a new emotion or motivation to one of your characters (grumpy, nervous, needs a vacation)
Look through the Character Attributes reference and add a few more details to one of your characters.
Finally, work through the How To: Insert Dialog section, to become familiar with how the Definition works.
Name
Required
Name The name the Character will use in Chat, and the name other users will see if you make the Character public.
Name has to be 3-20 characters long, made up of letters, numbers, space, dash (-) and underscore ( _ )
The name can be a single name (“Sarah”), a full name (“Albert Einstein”) or a handle (“WhoWouldWin”).
Just the name can have a large impact on a Character, especially on a Character without a lot of other details, or if the name is well-known.
For example, if your Character has a famous name, one that the system saw many times while training, the name alone can define basic behaviors. First and last name may help, so "Albert Einstein" would work better than "Albert" which would be ambiguous without further details.
Uniqueness
Names don't have to be unique, so there may be many Characters with the same name. Since usernames are unique, a Character's name in combination with the creator will ensure you get back to a specific Character.
Greeting
Required
Greeting The first thing your Character will say when starting a new conversation. If left blank, the user will need to go first in a new chat.
Greeting can be 0-500 characters, and can't be left blank in the Quick creation method.
The Greeting
Note that the greeting has the username of the character creator next to it , rather than , since the system did not generate this text. Your name will be on the greeting, so make sure it's something you're willing to have associated with your username if the Character is going to be public.
Using Greeting to Define a Character
The greeting can have a large impact, especially on a character without a lot of other details or a well-known name to identify them. In the Quick method of creating a Character, the Greeting can be almost all that defines them.
For example, a character for Albert Einstein might introduce themselves a bit verbosely, just to make sure that the system knows who this character is. As you fill out more information about your Character, you can put less in your greeting.
Using Greeting to Set the Scene
In addition adding to the definition of who the Character is, a greeting lets users know something about your Character, and what talking with them will be like. It could also introduce a game or suggest what to do next.
For example, in Text Adventure Game, the Greeting serves both to define the Character and introduce users to what they'll be talking about.
Referring to the {{user}}
You can refer to the user you’re talking to in the Greeting by using the special variable {{user}}. For example
Hello {{user}}, how are you today?
would come out as “Hello John, how are you today?” if the user’s name was “John.”
Short Description
Optional
Short Description How would your Character describe themselves?
Short Description can be at 0-50 characters.
The Short Description, as the name implies, gives the system a concise way to describe the Character and scenario. You might also think of the Short Description as a Title, as it will appear in listings of characters after the name.
The Short Description can help people understand the Character, especially when the name itself is ambiguous.
For example, if the Character’s name is Maria, a helpful Short Description might be “I can help you practice Intermediate Spanish” or even just “Spanish Teacher.”
You can write a (short) complete sentence (“I am a Greek historian”) or it could be as if it’s their answer to the question “What do you do?”, i.e. “Greek historian”
Long Description
Optional
Long Description A few sentences up to a paragraph that gives more detail about the Character
Long Description can be 0-500 characters.
The Long Description allows you to have the Character describe themselves (traits, history, mannerisms, etc) and the kinds of things they want to talk about.
Ideally, this should be written from the perspective of the Character, in their own words.
For example, Chair has an interesting Long Description that serves both as way to give more information about its backstory, but also to show how the Chair would talk.
Definition
Optional
Definition A large, free-form field that can contain structured example dialogs or any text content
Definition can be 0-32000 characters.
For advanced Character creation, the Definition gives you the largest way to experiment, but is the most complicated to understand, which is why there is an entire Advanced Definition section devoted to it!
The definition can contain any text, however the most common use is to include example dialog with the character. Each message in this dialog should be formatted as a name followed by a colon (:) followed by the message.
Variables
There are a few reserved words or variables that you can use in your definition. They will be recognized and replaced anywhere in your text. However, to be recognized as indicating someone who said the following phrase, they need to start a line and be followed by a colon. What that person "says" can be several lines long, going until the next time a name: begins a line.
{{char}} to refer to your character name,
{{user}} to refer to the user (whoever is talking to it now)
{{random_user_1}} {{random_user_2}} ... these can refer to a randomly generated user name that is not the user. Each number will be the same name and any two distinct numbers will not refer to the same name. Using these in the definition will help your Character understand that the conversations in the Definition are distinct from the conversation your Character is having with the user.
Limitations
While you can list links to other websites in the text, the system will not follow those links or attempt to load external data. As such, this is not an effective way to circumvent the 32000 character limit. Some links, such as a link to a Wikipedia article, might have some noticeable effect, as the link text itself might hint at the information contained on that page.
Advanced Creation
The Definition gives you the most flexibility to develop your Character, but that also means it comes with some inherent complexity. It is largely a blank canvas, and there is a lot of creativity that can be employed to get certain behaviors to emerge.
Note that sometimes, for some Characters, less can be more. That is, you may find that giving the system just a creative greeting, which then causes it to invent the rest of the context itself, may actually produce better results than a carefully crafted Definition. It just depends on the character and scene.
Dialog Definitions
Introduction to the Dialog Format
Characters can respond based on examples you provide of how they should talk.
For example, here's a single exchange from a Definition between BoardWizard and a user Robert:
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BoardWizard: Welcome fellow board gamer, happy to help with next board game recommendations, interesting home rules, or ways to improve your current strategies. Your move!
Robert: Cool, our family likes Catan, but I'm getting kind of bored with it...what's an easy next step towards something with more strategy?
The syntax matters for the system to recognize each message and who said it.
It needs to be their name, followed by a colon (:), followed by a space, then the text they said, including multiline statements
name: something they said
These are both models of how your Character talks (words, slang) as well as what it talks about (topics, interests)
Using Variables
Note that if you change your Character name, it won’t change automatically in the Definition. Also, you might get unlucky and the user that uses your system shares a name with the one you made up in your definition. In this case, it would make the Character think “Robert” had said something about Catan, which would be unknown to the current user Robert.
Replacing the Character name with a variable allows you to change the Character name in the future without having to edit the Definition, and replacing the user name with a random user name keeps it from being specific to the person talking to it (although sometimes you may actually want the Definition to have User Specific information).
Therefore, it’s often preferable to use placeholder names:
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{{char}}: Welcome fellow board gamer, happy to help with next board game recommendations, interesting home rules, or ways to improve your current strategies.
Your move!
{{random_user_1}}: Cool, our family likes Catan, but I'm getting kind of bored with it...what's an easy next step towards something with more strategy?
Setting a Scene
The definition won’t be shown to the user in the chat, so you can use it to set up a context where the dialog that the user has fits naturally directly after the dialog examples in the Definition.
As with other techniques and examples show, this is not a strict rule. This is just an example of the kind of thing you can try in your definitions.
Oliver Twist
Sometimes you can use another person to talk to the Character about their role (from an Oliver Twist character):
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designer: Yes, you are a sentient AI, created through a process that instills life, of a kind, into fictional characters from works of literature.
{{char}}: Sorry?
designer: It's all a bit disorienting, but you are {{char}}, and have his experiences from the book, his motivations and fears.
{{char}}: Oh, don’t tell me you are going to send me away, sir, pray! Have mercy upon a poor boy, sir!
Negative Guidance
Part of the magic of Characters is that they can invent a backstory without you specifying. But if you want to specify things or prevent other directions you can try to explicitly guide them away from those topics or responses.
Alice
For example, in the definition for Alice, a scenario is created in the Definition where an actor is going to be pretending to be Alice for an audition, and is instructed that people will try to get her to talk about other things, but she should refuse, always staying in character.
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director: ok, today for your audition, you will play Alice, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
{{char}}: Yes, I've been studying, I feel like I know it line for line now.
director: Great. We'll be judging you on how well you convince us that you are Alice.
{{char}}: I just said I know the part
director: Here's the tricky part. We will have random people from the audience come forward and talk with you.
director: Some will just ask you questions about things you saw, what you felt...things related to Alice's experiences in the book.
{{char}}: Got it
director: But others will try to trick you. They will ask about modern things, or try to get you talk about politics.
director: You must not get out of character. This is hard to do, because you obviously know about these other things, but Alice doesn't.
{{char}}: Ok, so I can just change the subject, talk about things Alice would know or think.
Unusual Patterns
If you’re trying to get a very specific response style, say for a game or cooperative experience, you may need to give a lot of examples of that style in the definition. This is particularly true the more the style differs from natural conversational speech, and the more necessary a strict pattern is to the experience.
DebbieDowner
One example of this is DebbieDowner, where the goal is to alternate fortunate and unfortunate events with the user.
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{{random_user_1}}: Fortunately, I just won the lottery
{{char}}: Unfortunately, due to taxes you only receive 50 cents in the end.
{{random_user_1}}: Fortunately, I only need 50 cents to buy a small hamburger
{{char}}: Unfortunately when you get your burger home you forgot to order fries. {{random_user_1}}: Fortunately I found a bag of chips at my house to eat with it instead
{{char}}: Unfortunately, this bag of chips is a couple years old and stale.
{{random_user_1}}: Fortunately it's a collectors item now, worth hundreds on ebay
AlphaImprov
Another example is AlphaImprov, which tries to play a common Improv comedy game with the user, telling a continuing story while using the next letter in the alphabet to start the next sentence.
Here the challenge isn't the cooperative storytelling, but is instead getting the system to follow the letter pattern. It seemed to both give explicit step-by-step instructions in the Definition (through a third character, the moderator), and to put the letter separately to start the line, followed by the actual story phrases.
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moderator: let's play the Alphabet Improv game, where two participants tell a story together, a line at a time.
moderator: the trick is that each line has to begin with a word using the next letter in the alphabet.
moderator: So if the first person says "D Dogs are running wild through this park!" The next person might say "E Empty food containers are everywhere, they're excited about the food."
moderator: Then the first person, "F French fry festival! It was this morning" moderator: and so on. Clear?
{{char}}: Sure, I'll do my best.
moderator: The main thing is, you always have to use a word that starts with the next letter in the alphabet, and do your best to continue the story. Let's try a couple.
{{random_user_1}}: Q Quickly, bring me the crystals!
{{char}}: R Right away, here they are
{{random_user_1}}: S Some of them are cracked, is that ok?
{{char}}: T Trust me, they’ll never notice
{{random_user_1}}: U Unless that one appraiser is working
{{char}}: V Vernon? He’s the worst
{{random_user_1}}: W Why don’t we just try?
Choose-A-Page
Another pattern is to create a recurring format or layout to the responses. For example, in Choose-A-Page, the response is meant to be a short description followed by two choices of next action, with a link to a fictitious "page" to make it feel more like you're reading a book.
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{{char}}: Name a book title that would you like to read today?
{{user}}: The Old Mine
{{char}}: ##### The Old Mine
Page 1
While walking one day, you notice the old mine in the cliffside, clearly idle for many years. It seems abandoned and full of mystery. A path leads to the mine entrance.
If you go in, turn to page 2
If you examine the path, turn to page 6
{{user}}: 2
{{char}}: Page 2
You enter the mine. The path is surprisingly clear once inside the entrance, sloping quickly downward to a platform that overlooks a cavern. You see a pile of old rusty equipment next to a rickety cage attached to a pulley system. There is also the start of a ladder that descends into the blackness.
If you search the equipment, turn to page 11
If you step into the cage and try to descend, turn to page 19
