Personas
A brief overview of Persona creation and tips for creating them!
To select, edit, or create a new persona you'll need to navigate to the Persona section of your profile display.
You can also create a new Persona from within a chat.
New Persona Interface
The Persona creation option is located under the Persona tab on your profile or in the sidebar of a chat, at the very bottom of Persona selection.
Image
Upload or generate an image to represent your Persona.
Name
The name of your Persona is what the placeholder variable {{user}} or user becomes when Xoul.AI compiles text.
Your Persona will function best when the name is a normal name or character title. Something like David, Sarah, or The Hero.
Gender
Like the gender option on a Xoul you can select Male, Female, Non-Binary, Prefer Not to Say or simply type and create a custom gender. The gender selected helps with pronoun usage.
Description
This is a brief description of the character you will be within a chat.
More About Personas
A Persona and a Xoul are not the same thing and shouldn't be written the same.
The AI model plays the Xoul character. It needs to know everything it possible can so it can believably portray this character accurately.
The AI model only reacts to the Persona character. All it needs is a simple "cheat sheet" about things it needs to remember about this character.
For the AI model things like your Persona's backstory (which hasn't been revealed in the story yet) or what your unclothed body looks like (which the other characters haven't seen yet because they're only just meeting you) isn't just not necessary for it to know- it's likely to cause you frustration in the chat.
The AI will treat anything written in the Persona's description as the known information about that character, because that's what it's supposed to do. It will assume every character it plays already knows everything written into the description, so every new character you meet might end up commenting on your weird hidden tattoo they haven't seen yet.
Don't confuse the model by including information it doesn't need to know.
If you want to roleplay as if you're a perfect stranger to the Xoul, your Persona should be only the most surface level details someone can work out about you by simply looking at you. If you're notorious or famous, you might include wildly known facts about your character, but that's all.
If you're roleplaying with a spouse or childhood friend Xoul, your Persona makes sense to include more things about your backstory or body but should generally be things you want the Xoul to act like it already knows about you.
Don't include information you wouldn't want a Xoul to act like it already knows about you! Simply reveal these details organically within the story for best results and record these details in the Memories field to make sure the model doesn't forget.
If you must include some sort of detail a Xoul isn't supposed to know about you, you should make the availability of the information clear as well.
Examples:
Sarah has a hidden tattoo on her inner thigh that only her romantic partners have ever seen.
David is secretly into collecting cat figurines, but he keeps this secret closely guarded.
And even when you do stipulate, the AI may still screw up and mention it.
Stranger Type Persona
Sarah is a young lady with pale skin, long, wavy blonde hair she keeps up in a messy ponytail and bright blue eyes. Dressing in jeans, t-shirts and an oversized hoodie, Sarah comes across as a casual sort of person. Sarah is average height, standing at 5'5" tall and is relatively slender.
The Xoul won't know my character's exact age, will only know that my character is female, generally know what I look like and have only the slightest hint about what sort of person I am. This means that everything else it wants or needs to learn about me needs to be organically discussed or discovered in the chat, making the story more realistic and immersive!
You'll need to make use of the Memories field inside the chat sidebar to keep track of details about your character that you organically reveal.
Familiar Friend Type Persona
David is tall, standing at a whopping 6'3" tall and has thick, messy brown hair cut short with bangs and brown eyes. David is usually wearing sneakers, distressed jeans and some sort of offensive graphic t-shirt with a leather jacket. Known for being the kind of guy to get into trouble with the law or be found at the bar, David's rough appearance obscures the fact that he's loyal and will always have his friend's back. David listens to heavy metal and rock, normally carries around a pocketknife that tends to come in handy and recently broke up with another one of his many short-term flings.
This character comes across as familiar and known to any Xoul you use it with. The Xoul will likely bring up the fact that David recently went through a breakup, ask if he's dating anyone new, remark on his favorite music, ask to borrow his pocketknife, etc. They might even remark on how loyal David is, or what a good friend he is.
These details are known! They can be more immersive when the characters are supposed to know each other, or they're frustrating out-of-character moments if the characters aren't supposed to know each other.
The more familiar your character is, the more you include.
If David has hidden tattoos and you're roleplaying with a character who is supposed to act like your current partner, they should know what those tattoos are and look like.
If you're roleplaying with a childhood friend, they'll know who your parents & siblings are. They'll know you flunked 9th grade.
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