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Characters & personas

A character is who you talk to; a persona is who you are in the scene. Pyre keeps both as portable, standard cards on your device.

What a character is

Every character in Pyre is a chara_card_v2 card — the same standard the wider ecosystem uses, so cards you import work here and cards you make here work elsewhere. Pyre supports the full set of standard fields:

Field What it holds
description The core of the character — appearance, background, traits.
personality A summary of disposition.
scenario The situation the chat opens in.
first_mes The opening message.
mes_example Example dialogue that demonstrates voice.
system_prompt A per-character system instruction.
post_history_instructions Instructions injected after the chat history.
alternate_greetings Extra opening messages (swipeable).
tags Free-form labels for filtering.
creator, character_version, creator_notes Authorship and notes.
talkativeness How readily the character speaks (used in group chats).
Depth-prompt (+ depth) A note inserted at a fixed depth in the conversation.
Embedded lorebook (character_book) World Info that travels with the card.
extensions Opaque extra data from other apps.

Round-trip fidelity

Pyre keeps the opaque extensions block untouched, so extension data written by Risu, SillyTavern, or Chub survives a Pyre import and re-export. See Card formats & compatibility.

Personas — who you are

A persona is a reusable user-side profile so the model knows your character too, not just the one you're talking to. A persona has:

  • a name,
  • a description,
  • an avatar,
  • optional dialogue examples (first-person voice samples that teach the model how you talk), and
  • bound lorebooks (World Info that's active whenever this persona is in play).

You can set a global default persona that every new chat uses. If you'd rather decide each time, turn on ask which persona on every new chat — Pyre then prompts you when you start one. There's also an explicit No persona choice per chat, for when you don't want a defined self in the scene at all.

Tip

Persona-bound lorebooks combine with the character's and the chat's own books, so your backstory follows you from card to card. See Lorebooks (World Info).

"Add as persona"

Any character can become a persona in one step with Add as persona. When it converts, Pyre auto-swaps {{char}} and {{user}} in the card's example dialogue so the speech rhythm reads as yours — turning a card you like into a playable self. The character's mini-gallery images are copied over to the new persona too.

Organizing your library

As your collection grows, Pyre gives you several ways to keep it manageable:

  • Favorites — star a character to float it to the top.
  • Folders — group characters into your own folders.
  • Tags — filter by the card's tags.
  • Search — find by name.
  • Sort — order the list the way you prefer.

Per-chat character snapshots

Each chat freezes a snapshot of the character (or characters) it uses. Editing a card later never retroactively rewrites your old conversations — the chat keeps the version of the card it started with. In group chats this also keeps per-message attribution correct: who said what stays right even if a character is later edited or removed.

Note

This is why an edit to a character is safe: your history is stable. A new chat picks up the latest version of the card; existing chats keep theirs.

Open a character's details sheet to see the full card alongside its chat count and a row of quick actions: start a new chat, edit, edit-with-AI, or export.

Each character (and persona) can also carry a mini-gallery — extra images beyond the avatar. They show in the details sheet, and they're copied along when you run Add as persona.

The library also tracks a "Cards created" stat, which distinguishes the cards you built in Pyre's AI Creator from the ones you imported.

See also