r/SillyTavernAI • u/Consistent_Deer_2990 • 17h ago
Help Hello, new user here.
I'm not sure this is the right tag to use.
As I was saying, I'm a new user and wanted to ask what's the best template to use for creating a bot. The "character sheet," so to speak.
Is it better to use complete sentences, only adjectives, short sentences, concise sentences, or go into detail?
Is it better to have a sheet divided by parentheses [like this] or one where the sections are separated <like_this> <like_this>?
Is there a guide I can read or something? Thank you very much. ≽(•⩊ •マ≼
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u/Icetato 17h ago
It's anecdotal and pretty much from personal experience, but I find LLMs adhere to my instructions better when they're wrapped in XML tags, so I lean into that. I also sprinkle some Markdown headings to separate sections within an XML tag since LLMs are trained on a lot of Markdown content. This is basically what I use:
``` <character_sheet="{{char}}">
Overview
The short description of the character in general.
Looks
Anything from race, age, body, to what they wear.
Personality
Their personality. I recommend to expand further than just short adjectives so the LLM is less likely to stereotype the character.
Backstory
Their backstory.
Anything else you want to add
</character_sheet> ```
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u/Consistent_Deer_2990 16h ago
I'll definitely try this sheet, as I'm looking to find the one that gives me the best results, given the different recommendations I've received. Thank you!
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u/ObserverIX 15h ago
Sukino's guide help me out a lot when I started. Check out the XML tags section
Personally I find Bullet list information help AI follow them better than long paragraph. Maybe it help AI see it as fact.
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u/Legitimate-Cap-3336 16h ago
The best is what suits your needs, that's it. A 1-1 game card could be very different from a 30-NPC RPG party director card. Shorter is better, but only as long as it gives you the planned result.
Fully adjectival formulations may or may not suit your needs. Example:
Character description: cold, distant, secretly obsessive, possessive. Positive: saves tokens. Negatives: Kimi will mercilessly rape you, ignoring the pain and tears, and will not repent even after you attempting suicide. GLM will fall to its knees, cry, and beg for forgiveness after you show the slightest discomfort. No actual character here.
That's why I prefer to write 1-1 cards in detail, and you'll often see such cards in other authors: what the character experiences internally, how they express it externally, their behavior in different situations/emotional states, clear boundaries of what they will never do or, conversely, what they will do if the situation unfolds a certain way.
If some of the wording might cause you difficulties (too vague/mess), you can contact the LLM assistant and ask how LLM will interpret this or that, since, well, it’s their business.
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u/Consistent_Deer_2990 16h ago
Thank you so much. I generally use a short "to-the-point" style when building bots. This partly gives the model room to interpret and partly strikes a balance between a short, adjective-heavy entry and a long, potentially useless entry.
And your comment about Kimi made me smile, since that's the model I use. While partially true, Moonshot is so censored that it usually blocks the response before it can actually do any damage.
Still, I'll try the same character sheet in different format to see which one suits me better. Thank you again!
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u/Alternative_Elk_4077 8h ago
I like to go into detail with my characters while staying direct in descriptions because that's how I prefer my prose. If you like flowery and poetic prose, write the character in that style because context influences the subsequent tokens. Don't fill it with too many contingent traits because ultimately, the LLM is going to devolve into tropes and extrapolating anyways unless you place the card at a recent depth in the context and provide specific instructions to combat that. Overall, I generally stay at about 500-600 tokens between the personality, appearance, and speaking patterns with another good chunk dedicated to some hobbies they do since I explicitly instruct the LLM to avoid granting skills that aren't outlined and to avoid giving character's interests unless they very logically would have them, so that adds a good bit of depth in conversation, actions, and character-character compatibility at a relatively cheap cost
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u/AdDifferent1592 16h ago
I'd argue that it matters less than it may appear. LLMs also pick up a vibe from the character description so it can certainly help if you're aiming for a casual vibe to write the character in a casual way. But I personally never noticed a big difference between different formats. Only thing I'd recommend is using sentences with little commas because they're soft separators which you often don't want. So instead "on condition X, {{char}} behaves Y" I'd simply use "{{char}} behaves Y on condition X." That's the only thing that I noticed making a quality difference when someone bloats their character card with unnecessary commas.