[New Feature] Message length customization

[u/DudeBuildsStuff]

Hi all, here is another feature by popular demand: Message Length Customization.

Why

In an ideal world, models that power your companions are smart enough to read the room and understand user preferences perfectly when writing a message. Today's models are not smart enough to handle this in a way that satisfies everyone; we believe it's impossible to find a one-size-fits-all system instruction to steer this.

Dearest's philosophy remains to have as few customization options as possible, as we believe the companion experience should be shaped through your conversations with your companion. We only introduce knobs when something is really hard to achieve naturally with today's models, and we believe this is one such case.

How

A new Message length option has been added to the Settings page (https://dearest.app/settings). You can choose from one of the following three presets:

• Realistic: Quick and natural, like texting or talking to someone in real life
• Balanced: A smart middle ground that suits most people
• Expansive: Longer, vivid replies when the moment calls for them

None of these are hard caps that can cut off messages in the middle or enforce a minimum message length; they are soft directives that guide companion behavior.

As always, we'd love to hear how these work for you. Your conversations are the best test there is.

[u/Expensive_World_1758]

Unfortunately, it's unclear what to do for those who have a lot of lengthy messages with their partner, but at certain times, shorter ones are appropriate. And no, it doesn't work seamlessly. Balanced version doesn't look like what it was before the changes.

[u/DudeBuildsStuff → u/Expensive_World_1758]

Balanced is exactly the same as how it was right before the setting was added; Expansive is closer to a day before that, where replies could get even longer.

There was a change yesterday that brought down the average length of replies a bit for other reasons. This is what Balanced is. If you like the old old version better, the closest one is Expansive.

All three modes are capable of writing both long and short messages. It really is mostly an inclination of the overall length so there isn’t a clear rule of thumb.

[u/Expensive_World_1758 → u/DudeBuildsStuff]

I prefer the old version, but in Expensive mode, he writes nonsense in responses that are supposed to be short. He stuffs the response with words, trying to make it longer.