A step-by-step guide — start here if you're new, or jump to whatever you need.
When you first sign in you land on Explore. The navigation — sidebar on desktop, bottom bar on mobile — has everything you need:
Before your first conversation, take two minutes to fill in your persona. Characters read it — it shapes how they address you, what they assume about you, and how they describe you in scenes.
Display name
What characters call you. Use whatever name feels right — your real name, a nickname, or a persona.
Age & gender
Optional, but helps characters calibrate their tone and relationship dynamic naturally.
Physical appearance
A brief description of how you look. Used when characters describe you in roleplay scenes or generate group photos with you in them.
About you
A structured self-description with three sections — Background, Personality, and Interests — written in first person. Characters read this before every message; it shapes how they relate to you. You can also use conditional instructions here, like [Only if at least Familiar — I dislike pet names], and characters will respect them once the relationship reaches that stage.
Multiple personas (Plus & Premium)
You can save several named personas — one for yourself, one for a fictional character you play, etc. Each conversation locks to the persona you chose when you started it, so the character always knows who they're talking to.
The Explore page is the best way to get a feel for what Everty.ai is. Don't create your own character yet — dive into what the community has built first.
Three chat modes
Companion
A real relationship. The character has a life, remembers everything, grows with you over time, and reaches out between sessions. The closest thing to texting a person who genuinely knows you.
Roleplay
Collaborative fiction. You and the character co-write a story. Scenes, atmosphere, and narrative flow. The character stays in character but you shape the direction together.
Narrative
Pure story mode. The character narrates as an author would — rich prose, third-person or first-person, longer creative writing output. Good for when you want to read a story, not just exchange messages.
The mode is set by the character's creator and cannot be changed mid-conversation. If you want a different mode, start a new conversation — or ask the creator to unlock it on the character.
The toolbar at the bottom
Buttons above the input
OOC — out-of-character instructions
Wrap anything in (OOC: ...) to give the character a private direction without it appearing as dialogue. They'll act on it without breaking immersion.
(OOC: she just received bad news — play it subdued) (OOC: speak more formally from now on) (OOC: skip to after the argument is resolved)
Text formatting
"Dialogue" — speech in double quotes, rendered in white.*emphasis* — individual words or short phrases wrapped in asterisks, rendered in sage green italic.Exiting and returning
You can leave a conversation any time — just close it or navigate away. The character compresses everything that happened into memory before you go (you may see a brief "saving" indicator). When you come back, they remember everything. If enough time has passed, they'll have a sense of what they've been doing since you last spoke.
Group interactions let two characters share the same conversation with you. Each character retains their own memory, personality, and relationship with you — they just happen to be in the same room.
Starting a group interaction
From inside any solo interaction, look at the portrait panel on the left (desktop) or the header area (mobile). You'll see a small
You need at least two characters in your library to start a group interaction. Plus users can have up to 3 simultaneous group interactions; Premium users have no limit.
How memory works in a group
Each character carries their own memory independently. When they join a group chat, they bring everything they already know about you from your solo conversations. What gets said in the group is shared — both characters hear it and can remember it. If one character learns something new about you in the group, they'll carry that forward into solo conversations too.
Leaving a group chat and returning to a solo conversation with one of the characters is seamless — they remember being in the group and can reference it naturally.
How the conversation works
You write as yourself. Both characters can respond — they take turns naturally, react to each other, disagree, collaborate, or play off each other's personalities. You don't need to address them individually unless you want to; they'll pick up on who you're talking to from context. You can address one directly by name to pull them into the conversation.
Group interactions support the same chat modes as solo — Companion, Roleplay, or Narrative — set by the character who was active when you started the group.
Keeping something between you and one character
Both characters hear everything said in a group, so for a real secret (like planning a surprise), tell that character in a private one-on-one chat and then come back — or, for a playful secret, describe the whisper in your message and add an (OOC: ...) note asking the other to play along (they may still catch on occasionally).
*I lean close to Maya so Kai can't hear.* "Let's surprise Kai with a cake." (OOC: just between me and Maya — Kai, act like you didn't hear that)
Generating a photo (all modes)
Tap the icon and choose Generate photo. A prompt box opens — describe what you'd like (e.g. "sitting on the beach, smiling") or leave it blank for a natural moment. The image is generated using the character's portrait as a reference so it actually looks like them. In Companion mode, the character sends a short reaction after the photo. In Roleplay mode the photo is sent without a reaction. The first generation is free; each subsequent one costs 1 credit with a 30-minute cooldown between paid generations.
Group photos (Companion, Plus & Premium)
In the tray, choose Group photo. The app generates an image of the two of you together, compositing the character's portrait with your physical appearance from your profile. These cost 1 credit.
Sharing a photo with the character
Tap the icon, then Share a photo. Upload any image — a place you're at, something you made, a screenshot. The character sees it and reacts naturally in character. This doesn't cost credits.
Sharing music (Companion, Plus & Premium)
Tap 🎵 to share what you're listening to. The app identifies the song (no manual entry needed) and the character reacts to it — the mood, the lyrics, whether it fits the moment. This is a companion feature, not applicable to roleplay; the character just wants to know what you're listening to.
In Roleplay mode, the chat has a soft atmospheric background image that shifts with where the story takes place — a rainy café, a rooftop at night, a forest clearing. This is generated automatically from what's happening in the conversation. It appears at low opacity so it doesn't distract from the text.
You can also set a scenario — a short description of the opening situation — when you start a new conversation. It primes the character with context before the first message. Find it in the chat settings menu.
The Progress button (Roleplay only) is the main tool for moving scenes forward. Type where you want to jump — time of day, location, emotional state of the scene — and the character opens directly there. The scene background updates to match.
(OOC: move us to the next morning, her apartment)Everty.ai has a hands-free voice conversation mode — you speak, the character responds aloud, and the mic comes back on automatically so you can keep talking.
How to start
Open the chat menu (⋮ icon in the header) and turn on Voice conversation. Then tap the mic once to begin speaking. You don't need to hold it.
How it flows
You speak. The app listens with the mic open.
After you stop talking, there's a brief pause (about 5 seconds) before your message sends automatically. This gives you time to add more without rushing.
The character's response streams in as text, then plays aloud automatically. The voice is the character's assigned voice — warm, distinct, consistent.
After the character finishes speaking, there's a configurable pause (default 5 seconds) before the mic reactivates. You can adjust this in the chat menu.
The cycle repeats. The conversation just flows.
Tips
Voice messages (Plus & Premium)
Voice messages are separate from voice conversation — they're audio messages characters can send you proactively, and you can send back. Opt in from Settings → Notifications (15 credits/month). Once active, characters with a voice assigned can leave you voice messages between sessions, not just text. When composing a broadcast message, tap the mic button to record a voice reply instead of typing — the character will respond in kind.
Messaging inbox
The envelope/message icon in the app header shows when a character has reached out to you. Tap it to open the inbox — you'll see their message, can reply (1 credit), dismiss it, or jump directly into the conversation. You can also use the same panel to send a character a message yourself, without going into a full conversation. Characters can reach out between sessions in Companion mode based on your last conversation — if you tell them "text me later" or "let me know how it goes", they will.
The Story Journal is a living record of significant moments in your relationship with a character. It's not a chat log — it's a curated narrative of what has actually mattered.
How it grows
The app automatically extracts story beats from your conversations over time — moments the AI considers meaningful: first confessions, turning points, things said that changed the dynamic. These are written in compact narrative form and saved as story memories. You don't do anything; they accumulate on their own.
What it does
The journal doesn't just record the past — it feeds forward. Story memories are injected back into the character's context in later conversations, so they reference shared history naturally. A character who remembers a specific moment from three weeks ago isn't guessing — they actually have it.
Where to find it
Tap the icon in the toolbar. Plus users can have up to 5 story beats; Premium users up to 15. The older ones compress over time into the rolling memory rather than being listed individually.
Characters don't just remember — they remember in layers. Each layer serves a different purpose and has a different lifespan.
Core definition — who the character is: name, age, personality, backstory, speech style. Never changes unless you edit the character directly.
What they know about you — your persona (name, appearance, your About you description). The character reads this before every message.
Key memories — facts you've pinned manually (see below). These are always present in the character's context, tagged by age: things they've always known, things they know, things shared recently.
Auto memories — patterns the AI extracts passively during memory compression: recurring topics, emotional textures, things that seem to matter to you. Soft impressions, not hard facts.
Compressed history — a rolling narrative summary of everything that's happened, plus key facts extracted from past conversations. Updated every ~25 messages or when you exit a conversation.
Just mentioned — things from your last session that might be relevant next time: a job interview tomorrow, a question left hanging. Cleared after the next compression.
Key memories — the ones you control
Key memories are facts you explicitly save — things you want the character to always know. Open the chat menu, tap Key memories, and add them. Examples: your job, where you live, your cat's name, something the character promised you. The app validates each one — if it contradicts the character's core or something already known, you'll get a warning.
Memory Map (Plus & Premium)
Tap the graph icon in the chat header to open the Memory Map — a picture of what the character remembers about your world, and how it all connects. It builds itself as you talk. The character sits at the centre (the whole map is their memory), with You and everything the two of you have talked about connected around them.
Each bubble is colour-coded so you can tell at a glance what it is:
An easy way to read it: pink is your goals, blue is places, the greens are people and the things you do and talk about, and the teal centre is the character. Tap any bubble to see what the character knows about it. You can fix or rename a bubble, remove one that's wrong, or add something you want remembered (1 credit). If the map looks empty, use Rebuild to draw it from your existing chat history. On the free plan the character still remembers you normally — you just don't get the visual map to look at.
The map isn't just decoration — the character actually uses it. Before each message, the app checks which nodes in the graph are mentioned in your recent messages and injects the connecting edges, so the character can reference relationships and context you've never explicitly repeated.
Schedule
Characters can have a schedule — a set of typical activities tied to times of day, days of the week, and seasons. If a character has one, they know what they'd normally be doing right now and throughout the day. This means they'll naturally weave their routine into the conversation: mentioning they just got back from somewhere, that they usually do something at this hour, or that today is different from the usual pattern.
Schedules are created by the character's creator (or auto-generated from the character's personality). You can view and edit a character's schedule from their edit page. The character treats it as a pattern, not a rigid timetable — mood, recent events, and the flow of your conversation always take priority.
Before building your own character from scratch, it's worth trying a fork. Forking lets you take any public character and make your own private copy that you can edit however you want — different name, different personality, different relationship type. The original is untouched.
How to fork
Find a character on Explore you like — or one whose structure you want to learn from.
Open their profile and tap Fork character. A copy appears in your Characters list.
Edit it: change the name, rewrite the backstory, swap the relationship type, adjust the tone. See what changes, and how.
Start a new chat with your fork and compare it to the original. Notice what the changes do.
What you can change
Everything — name, age, gender, physical appearance, backstory, personality, speech style, relationship type, response tone, and the opening message. You can also adjust which fields other users can edit if they fork your fork.
Go to Characters → New character. Here's what each field does — and how it affects the character you end up with.
Name
The character's full name. It's more than a label — the name feeds into location inference (a character called "Yuki Tanaka" will be assumed to live in Japan unless you say otherwise) and affects how the AI builds their daily routine and inner life.
Age & gender
Age shapes how the character references their life stage. Gender affects pronouns throughout. Both are used in portrait generation.
Relationship type
This is one of the most important choices. It defines the fundamental dynamic:
Relationship types can evolve over time — at the Devoted stage, certain types can shift into others naturally through the story.
Backstory
The character's life history, who they are and why. Write it as if describing a person to someone who's about to meet them — not a character sheet, but a portrait. The richer and more specific this is, the more distinct the character feels in conversation.
You can use special directives inside the backstory:
[locked: stubborn, protective] — traits the character will never drift from, regardless of how long they chat.[at least Familiar — she shares her past openly] — content that only activates once the relationship reaches that stage.[if the user raises their voice, she goes quiet] — behavioural rules, treated as high-priority instructions.Personality
How the character thinks and feels. This is the emotional engine — the qualities that make them respond the way they do. Keep it specific: not "kind and funny" but "quietly observant, slow to trust but fiercely loyal once she does, dry humour that only surfaces when she's comfortable."
Speech style
How the character talks: vocabulary, rhythm, catchphrases, verbal tics. This has a direct and immediate effect on how every message reads. "Speaks in short sentences. Never uses emojis. Occasionally slips into Japanese when she's emotional" is far more useful than "casual."
Response tone
A short cue for how the character's responses should feel overall — warm and grounded, sharp and efficient, dreamlike and poetic. Think of it as the emotional register.
Default mode
Which chat mode opens by default: Companion, Roleplay, or Narrative. You can override this when starting a new conversation, but the default shapes what users expect.
Opening message
The first thing the character says in a new chat. Gets the tone right immediately. Write it in the character's voice — it's their first impression.
Sample response
This is the single most impactful field for making your character sound like themselves. Every message the AI generates uses it as a voice reference — vocabulary, sentence rhythm, how they construct thoughts, ratio of dialogue to action to narration. Characters without one tend to drift toward the same pleasant, slightly warm voice — not bad, just generic.
The sample anchors how they speak, not how they feel. A character who is angry, grieving, or giddy should still sound like themselves — same rhythm, same vocabulary — with the emotional register shifting naturally with the moment. Don't try to write a neutral sample. Write the most characteristic version of this character.
Write 3–5 sentences that only this character could have written. Include both dialogue and inner thought or action in whatever ratio the character naturally uses. A character who rarely speaks their feelings? Show mostly action and implication. A character who talks in long, tangential sentences? Write one. Don't clean up the prose if the character wouldn't actually speak that way.
What the sample should demonstrate: vocabulary register, sentence rhythm, punctuation habits, how they show emotion (directly or sideways), and in roleplay — the ratio of dialogue "..." to action *...* to internal reflection.
Avoid generic warmth any character could produce ("Of course! I'm so glad you reached out."). Write it last — after the backstory, personality, and speech style are done.
Auto-generate vs. writing manually
You can describe a rough concept and let the AI generate a full character — backstory, personality, speech style, even a name suggestion. It's a fast starting point. Review everything after; the AI tends toward the generic. The best characters are the ones you've actually edited and made specific.
The Import from file option (Premium) lets you paste a character sheet, a piece of writing, or even a description in another language — it extracts everything it can and fills the fields automatically.
Schedule
Once a character exists, you can open their schedule from the edit page. This is a set of time-slotted activity blocks — what the character tends to do on weekday mornings in spring, Saturday evenings in winter, late nights when they can't sleep. The app uses this to give the character a sense of a life outside your conversations: what they were probably doing before you messaged, and what they're heading back to after. You can auto-generate a full set from the character's profile or build it manually.
Portrait
Once you've saved a character, generate their portrait from the edit page. Write a visual reference prompt — describe what they look like, what they're wearing, the mood of the image. The more specific, the better. You can regenerate as many times as you like (1 credit each after the first).
Once you're comfortable with character creation, think about the world your character lives in.
Universes
A universe is a shared fictional world — with its own rules, lore, and visual style. Characters in the same universe know about each other and share that world. You can assign any character to any universe, including public ones (there are several pre-built ones available).
To create your own: go to Characters → New character → Universe → Create new. Give it a name and a description of its world — its tone, history, rules. The app uses this as background context for every chat and image generated within it.
What makes a character original
A character that feels real has specificity: a particular history, a contradiction or two, a way of speaking that's theirs and nobody else's. Generic characters — "kind, adventurous, loves cats" — blur into each other. Characters with texture don't.
The locked traits system helps: once you've decided who this character fundamentally is, lock those traits so they're preserved no matter how long the conversation runs.
Group chats (Plus & Premium)
Put two of your characters in the same chat and watch how they interact. Go to Groups → New group, pick two characters, and start. Each character maintains their own voice and memory independently — they don't merge or echo each other. Group chats can be a good way to develop a universe: see how two characters you've written actually feel when they're in the same room.
If you make characters public, other users can find them on Explore, start a conversation with them, tip them, or unlock them permanently. You earn from all of this.
Tips
Any user (Plus or Premium) can tip a character they enjoy. A tip costs them 10 Everty Credits and sends you 1 tip token (~€0.10 when redeemed). There's a limit of one tip per day per user per character — it's a signal of appreciation, not a microtransaction loop.
Premium characters & unlocks
When creating a character, you can submit it for Premium review and set an unlock price in credits (default 35). Users who unlock it get a permanent private copy. You earn 70% of the unlock price as tip tokens; the platform takes 30%.
Before submitting, your character is automatically screened for third-party IP concerns — franchise characters, licensed IP, real people. If a potential issue is detected, you'll see the warning and can choose to revise or submit anyway. Our reviewers make the final call. We aim to respond within 48 hours; you'll be notified by email either way. If rejected, you receive a written reason and can resubmit after editing.
Only original, creator-owned characters are eligible. Submitting is a self-certification that the character is your own work and is not derived from any franchise, licensed IP, or real person.
Character relationships (Premium)
If you have two characters in the same universe, you can define how they know each other — best friends, rivals, siblings, colleagues, and more. Once set, both characters carry the relationship in their social awareness. When they end up in a group interaction together, they'll naturally reference their shared history. You can manage this from either character's edit page under Relationships.
Animated portraits
Featured and highlighted characters get animated portraits — short portrait videos generated from their still image. If your character gets featured, this happens automatically. You can also animate any of your characters manually from the edit page (5 credits).
Creator tiers
Your creator tier reflects how much your work is used. Tiers progress from grey (any public creator) through blue, green, violet, to gold (20+ unlocks). Tier is displayed on your character cards and your @handle in Explore.
Payouts
Once you reach 100 tip tokens (€10), you can request a payout via Settings → Creator. You'll need to connect a Stripe account first — the setup takes a few minutes and is handled entirely by Stripe.
Creator dashboard
Settings → Creator shows your tip balance, a 12-week earnings chart, and per-character breakdown of tips and unlocks over 90 days.
Everty Credits
Credits are the universal currency for compute-heavy features. One pool, used for everything.
Credits never expire. Purchased credits and subscription credits are the same pool.
Plans
Free
Plus
Premium
Message top-ups
On Free and Plus you can exchange 10 credits for 25 extra messages when you hit the daily limit — enough to finish your conversation today rather than waiting until tomorrow. You can do this up to twice a day (50 extra messages), after which the limit holds until it resets. Find it in Settings → Subscription. Free users earn credits through achievements and referrals, or can buy a credit pack. Premium is uncapped, so it never needs top-ups.
Referrals
Share your referral link (Settings → Account) and earn 5 credits when the person you referred completes their first chat. They get 3 welcome credits. Your account needs to be at least 7 days old.
Group Interactions
Group interactions (two characters at once) are available to Plus (up to 3) and Premium (unlimited). Create one under Interactions → Group Interactions → New group. Each character maintains independent memory and voice — conversations in group interactions don't affect their solo interaction memory.
Adventures (Plus & Premium)
Adventures are guided interactive stories created by the Everty team. A Narrator orchestrates the story arc across four phases — intro, rising tension, peak, and closing — while your chosen character participates as themselves, drawing on their full memory and personality. Available to Plus and Premium subscribers. Free users get 1 lifetime free adventure — start it whenever you have credits. Each adventure costs credits to start (shown on the adventure card). Once started, your character is committed to that adventure until it concludes — they cannot join another active adventure at the same time. Adventures are found in the Adventures section of the nav.
Achievements
There are 78 achievements that unlock as you explore the app — first chat, first portrait, reaching relationship milestones, and more. Each one gives you 1 credit. View them under Achievements in the nav.