The People in Your Pocket
Every story needs a cast. In Inkstone, the cast lives in characters: fully realized AI personalities, each one packed into a tidy little “card” that holds everything the AI needs to become someone. A name, a voice, a face, a first line of dialog, the whole costume rack. Think of each card as a script and an actor rolled into one.
And then there’s the other side of the conversation. Your Persona is how you show up in the story. The name and shape the AI sees when it looks across the table at “you.” More on that soon.
Building Someone From Scratch
From the Gallery screen, tap + and choose “Create Character.” A blank card opens, and you fill in the soul.
The basics that make a character recognizable. Name is required, everything else is optional but recommended. Avatar gives them a face (with crop adjustment, because nobody’s first photo is their best angle). Creator tracks who built the card. Character Version is for version nerds who like clean numbers. Tags are comma-separated labels that make your Gallery searchable later, and future-you will be grateful you used them.
This is the meat. Three fields, each doing different work.
Description
The physical, the tangible, the specific. What do they look like? How do they carry themselves? What’s the scar from, and why do they touch it when they’re nervous? The more textured you get here, the more the AI has to work with. Be generous with the details you find… compelling.
Personality
The behavioral blueprint. Go deeper than “kind” or “brooding.” How are they kind? When do they brood? The patterns and contradictions that make a person feel real.
Scenario
Sets the stage. What’s already happened? What’s the tension in the room before anyone speaks?
The Gallery
Your Gallery is the collection. Every character you’ve created or imported lives here, each one displayed as a card showing their avatar, name, a preview of their description or creator notes, and up to three tags (with a quiet “+X more” if they’re well-labeled).
Tags make characters findable. Use them like you’ll forget what you named things. (You will.)
Finding Who You’re Looking For
Tap the search icon to filter by name, tags, or description. Sort by import date (newest first, the default) or alphabetically, for the orderly among us.
The Detail Sheet
Tap any card and the full portrait unfolds. Every field, every detail, plus four actions: Start Chat (the whole point), Edit (refine them), Clone (copy them for experiments), and Delete (permanent, unforgiving, proceed with certainty).
Importing Characters
Inkstone speaks the Character V2 card standard, the common language of the AI roleplay community. If a character exists out in the world, you can probably bring them home.
What You Can Import
| Format | Description |
|---|---|
| PNG files | Character card images with embedded JSON metadata (the classic character card image, data baked into the pixels) |
| JSON files | Standard Character V2 format files. Both work. Both are welcome. |
Single import: Gallery, then +, then “Import Character,” then pick your file. Bulk import: Same path, but choose “Import Multiple” and select a whole crew at once. Bulk imports show a results dialog afterward with per-file status, so you’ll know exactly who made it in, who arrived with warnings, and who got lost at the door.
Inkstone points you toward community repositories. The Great Library of Stories is recommended warmly. Chub.ai is the main community hub. Fair warning: some community sources contain NSFW content, so navigate with whatever level of caution suits your household.
Exporting Characters
From the character editor or detail view, you can export in two formats. Export as JSON gives you a standard Character V2 file, compatible with other apps in the ecosystem. Export as PNG embeds all the character data inside a PNG image (requires a PNG avatar to work with).
Exports preserve round-trip fidelity. Fields from the original import that Inkstone doesn’t directly edit are kept intact, untouched, exactly where you left them. Your characters travel well.
Cloning a Character
The Clone feature creates a complete copy of a character, and it’s more useful than it sounds. Want to test a different personality on the same premise? Clone. Want to try a wilder system prompt without risking the original? Clone. Want to build a whole family of variations, siblings with different temperaments? Clone, clone, clone.
The copy gets “(Copy)” appended to its name, every field duplicates (avatar, tags, alternate greetings, the works), and it opens directly in the editor so you can start reshaping before you save. The original stays pristine. That’s the whole point.
Personas
The Other Side of the Story
A Persona is you, or whoever you want to be. It’s the name and description the AI sees when it reads “you” in the conversation. Your costume for the story.
Head to Settings
Go to Settings, then Personas, then +.
Give Yourself a Name
Name is required.
Add a Description
Add a Description if you want the AI to perceive you a certain way — maybe you’re a wandering scholar, maybe you’re a detective with a bad knee, maybe you’re just yourself on a better day.
Choose an Avatar
Toss in an Avatar if you like (crop adjustment included). That’s it. Personas are lean by design: name, description, face. No seventeen-field form. You’ve got enough going on.
You can Set as Default so a persona gets used automatically in new chats. Edit to update anything. Delete to remove one permanently.
During onboarding, Inkstone asks you to create your first persona. Just a name and an optional description. It takes thirty seconds and it means every conversation from that point forward knows who’s talking.
How It All Connects
The Architecture of a Conversation
When you start a chat with a character, the pieces snap together. A new conversation is created. The character’s First Message becomes the opening line (if one exists). Alternate Greetings appear as swipeable options on that first message.
Any lorebooks tied to the character link automatically, bringing their world-building context along for the ride. The character’s description, personality, scenario, and example dialogs feed into the system prompt, assembling the full picture of who the AI is playing.
And your Persona slides in alongside it, so the AI knows who it’s playing with.
Two people, one stage, all the context they need. That’s the architecture. The rest is just conversation.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
Example Dialogs teach the AI a character’s voice more effectively than any description can. Descriptions say who someone is. Examples prove it. If you write nothing else, write examples.
System Prompt overrides on individual characters let you fine-tune AI behavior per-character without touching your global settings. Surgical precision, exactly where you need it.
Tags make characters findable. Use them like you’ll forget what you named things. (You will.)
And when you import community characters that come with embedded lorebooks, the world-building context arrives automatically. No assembly required. Just unpack and play.
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