Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms used across these docs and inside Pyre, in alphabetical order.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Architect | The Creator's model "persona" — the character/scenario architect you talk to while it builds a card. Its prompts ship as a forkable preset. |
| BYOK | Bring-your-own-key. You supply the API key for a model provider; Pyre is just the interface and never hosts a model itself. |
| Branch / variant | An alternate generation of a message. Swipe </> between variants; rewriting a user message keeps each branch's own downstream timeline so you can explore alternate paths without losing the original. |
Character card (chara_card_v2) |
The standard, portable data model for a character — description, personality, scenario, first message, example dialogue, tags, and more — readable across the ecosystem and embeddable in a PNG. |
| Creator | Pyre's conversational, self-healing card builder ("Creator v2"). You describe a character or world and the Sheet fills in as you go — no "Generate now" button. |
| LAN sync hub | A desktop Pyre running a built-in LAN HTTP server (opt-in) that your other devices pair with to sync over your own network — no cloud, no account. |
| Live Sheet / Sheet | The live chara_card_v2 data view in the Creator that fills in field-by-field as you talk to the architect, so you watch the card take shape. |
| Long-term memory | A branch-aware auto-summarizer that condenses a chat into a running, continuous-narrative recap injected into the prompt, so old details survive past the model's context window. |
| Lorebook / World Info | A named collection of trigger-keyword entries injected into the prompt when relevant (or always, if "constant"). Lets the model recall world facts only when they come up, saving context. |
| Macro / template token | A placeholder like {{char}}, {{user}}, or {{scenario}} that Pyre resolves at send time so one prompt adapts to whatever character, persona, and lore are active. |
| OOC | Out-of-character. An aside to the model that isn't part of the story — sent with the /ooc slash command. |
| Persona | A reusable profile for you — name, description, avatar, voice samples, and bound lorebooks — so the model knows who you're playing. |
| Preset | A named bundle of system-prompt template, post-history block, optional impersonate/continue overrides, and optional per-preset sampling — the whole "engine tuning" of a chat in one tap. |
| Provider | An OpenAI-compatible endpoint you connect to (hosted service, community proxy, or self-hosted/local server) that actually runs the model. |
| Reasoning model | A model (DeepSeek-R1 etc.) that emits a "thinking" scratchpad. Pyre understands it, wraps it in <think> tags, and hides it by default so your roleplay text stays clean. |
| Scenario / Narrator card | A Creator mode that builds a whole setting — an omniscient narrator/Gamemaster that voices NPCs, with structured world and cast sections — rather than a single character. |
| Scene background | The soft art behind the chat bubbles ("chat backdrop"), sourced from the character or persona avatar, a custom image, or none — with adjustable opacity. |
| Script | Stage direction inside a chat — for example a scene-change narration sent with the /scene slash command — used to steer the roleplay without leaving the input box. |
| Smart fallback | When a generation fails or is refused, Pyre offers (never silently) to retry on your next configured provider, and learns which providers tend to refuse. |
| Snapshot | A frozen copy of the character(s) a chat uses, taken per chat, so editing a card later doesn't retroactively rewrite your old conversations. |