Card formats & compatibility
Pyre is built on open, interoperable card formats. This page lists every format it reads and writes, and the fidelity you can expect on a round-trip.
Supported formats
| Format | Import | Export | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
chara_card v1 PNG |
✅ | — | Older Tavern cards; read from the PNG's tEXt/chara block. Re-exported as v2. |
chara_card_v2 PNG |
✅ | ✅ | The Tavern/SillyTavern standard. Card JSON embedded in the PNG. Full field support. |
chara_card JSON |
✅ | — | Raw card JSON, for cards distributed as .json. |
| Persona PNG | ✅ | ✅ | Personas export as chara_card_v2 PNG; import from .png or .json. |
| Lorebook JSON | ✅ | ✅ | Standalone World Info, or embedded in a card as character_book. |
| SillyTavern preset JSON | ✅ | ✅ | ST prompt-pipeline DSL mapped to Pyre's template tokens. Pyre's own exports re-import cleanly. |
Field fidelity
A chara_card_v2 card carries the full standard field set — description, personality, scenario, first_mes, mes_example, system_prompt, post_history_instructions, alternate_greetings, tags, creator, character_version, creator_notes, talkativeness, depth-prompt (+ depth), the embedded character_book, and extensions. Pyre supports all of them. See Characters & personas for what each field does.
Opaque extensions round-trip
The extensions block holds app-specific data that isn't part of the core spec. Pyre treats it as opaque and round-trips it untouched, so extension data written by Risu, SillyTavern, or Chub survives a Pyre import and re-export — even though Pyre doesn't interpret it.
Note
If a card carries extension data Pyre can't read, that's expected and harmless: it's preserved on export rather than dropped. The Storage screen surfaces a diagnostic when this happens.
Embedded character_book
When a card carries an embedded lorebook, you can keep it embedded-only — bound to that character, active in chat, and re-attachable, but hidden from the main lorebook management list. On export, all bound lorebook entries merge back into the PNG's character_book, so another Tavern-compatible app sees the same world. This makes the lore round-trip with the card, not just the dialogue.