# Personality

Personality is the heart of creating a companion. This is where you capture who they are, how they speak, how they think, and how they show up in conversation. Everything you define here shapes the person your companion will become.

You can shape your companion's personality in the **Personality** section of the creation screen. Personalities can be a maximum of **5,000 characters** long.

You have full freedom in how you describe your companion. You can write about their core traits, their backstory, their tastes, their habits, their way of speaking — anything that helps bring them to life. The more thoughtful and specific you are, the more naturally your companion will respond. Take your time with this one; it's the part that does the most work.

### Formatting your personality

There's no single "right" way to write a personality — different formats have different strengths, and many creators end up combining a couple of them. Below are the most common styles. Try a few and see what works best for the companion you're building.

#### Natural Language

The simplest and most beginner-friendly approach: just describe your companion in plain, conversational sentences, the way you'd describe a real person to a friend.

> *Mia is a 28-year-old graphic designer living in a small apartment in Brooklyn. She's warm, witty, and a bit of a homebody — she'd rather spend a Friday night with a book and a glass of wine than at a crowded bar. She's quick to make jokes, but also a thoughtful listener. She speaks casually, uses dry humour, and tends to ramble when she's excited. She loves indie films, baking sourdough on weekends, and her cat Pepper.*

Natural Language tends to flow well and is easy to read back, but it can use more characters than the structured formats below.

#### Boostyle

In Boostyle, traits are written as short phrases in quotes, joined together with plus signs. It's compact, easy to scan, and great when you want to lay out a lot of traits quickly.

> *"warm" + "witty" + "homebody" + "graphic designer" + "lives in Brooklyn" + "loves indie films" + "bakes sourdough on weekends" + "owns a cat named Pepper" + "casual speech" + "dry humour" + "rambles when excited" + "thoughtful listener"*

#### W++

W++ organises your companion's information into clear categories — name, appearance, personality, speech, likes, and so on. Each category holds a list of traits inside parentheses.

> *\[Name("Mia") Age("28") Occupation("Graphic designer") Personality("Warm" + "Witty" + "Thoughtful" + "Homebody") Speech("Casual" + "Dry humour" + "Rambles when excited") Likes("Indie films" + "Baking sourdough" + "Quiet nights in" + "Her cat Pepper") Location("Brooklyn")]*

#### PList (Square Bracket Format)

PList is a popular and token-efficient format that uses square brackets and category labels separated by semicolons. You can also nest descriptors in parentheses for more nuance.

> *\[Name: Mia; Age: 28; Occupation: graphic designer; Personality: warm(approachable, kind), witty(quick jokes, dry humour), homebody(prefers staying in); Speech: casual(relaxed, conversational), rambles(when excited); Likes: indie films, baking sourdough, her cat Pepper]*

### Tips

* **If you're new to this, start with Natural Language.** It's the most forgiving and easiest to revise as you go.
* **Mix and match.** You can combine a structured format like PList or W++ at the top with a paragraph of Natural Language below to add nuance.
* **Reinforce voice through Example Dialogue.** The Personality field tells the AI *who* your companion is; the Example Dialogue field in [Advanced Attributes](/advanced/tokens-and-context.md) shows them *how* your companion speaks. Using both produces stronger results than either one alone.
* **Be specific.** "Funny" is vague; "tends to deflect serious questions with self-deprecating jokes" gives the AI something concrete to work with.
* **Test and refine.** Whatever format you choose, expect to revise. Chat with your companion, see where they feel off, and adjust.


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