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Personas, Custom Instructions, and in-chat direction solve different problems:
  • A Persona describes the user identity selected for a chat.
  • Custom Instructions define persistent response behavior.
  • A slash command or edited message steers the current moment.

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Build a useful persona

A persona has a name, gender, and a description of up to 2,500 characters. Create multiple personas in your profile settings and select the right one for each chat. Include details the character can reasonably know or observe:
Keep it direct. A persona does not need a complete biography. Add history during the roleplay and pin only the facts that matter later.
Enable Include persona in images when you want generated scenes to reflect the selected persona’s appearance.

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Write Custom Instructions

Custom Instructions hold up to 15,000 characters and control how replies are written or constrained. Good uses include:
  • Perspective and point of view.
  • Whether the AI may narrate the user’s actions.
  • Dialogue-to-description balance.
  • Romance pacing and boundaries.
  • Reply format.
  • Time progression.
  • How supporting characters should be handled.
Prefer a small number of testable rules:
Avoid rules that conflict with the character, selected chat style, or each other. If you say both “never move the scene forward” and “always end with a new event,” the model must choose which instruction to ignore.

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Use temporary direction for temporary events

Do not add a one-scene event to Custom Instructions. Use /direct:
Because /direct applies to one reply, it does not keep reintroducing the event. If you place the same instruction in a persistent field, the model may repeat it until you delete it.

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Separate knowledge from behavior

Use this test: When one fact appears in several layers, update all copies or remove the duplicates. Contradictory copies are harder for the model to resolve than one clear source.

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Creator text helpers

In a character greeting, write {{user}} when the text should display the current user’s name. Use hidden or internal text sparingly. Complex scripting can be powerful, but every hidden rule still consumes context and can conflict with the visible story. Start with plain fields and add structure only when testing shows that you need it.
Last modified on July 27, 2026