SillyTavern is a free, open-source frontend for interacting with LLMs that you can run locally on your device. It’s a powerful, versatile tool that you can customize to match your needs, as long as you’re willing to embrace its learning curve.
The developers don’t position it as a simple solution for any specific use case, but the feature-rich frontend has become the preferred choice for local AI roleplay.
The project, which began as a fork of TavernAI in 2023, has become one of the leading local LLM frontends. It remains free and independent, with over 200 contributors helping to develop and maintain it.
An Interview With Cohee, RossAscends, and Wolfsblvt
RPWithAI reached out to the SillyTavern’s developers, Cohee, RossAscends, and Wolfsblvt, for an interview to learn more about them and the project. We spoke about SillyTavern’s journey, its community, the challenges they face, and more.
Our discussion with the developers covered several topics. Some of these topics also warrant their own article. We thank the SillyTavern developers for taking the time out of their busy schedules to engage with us.
Over the last two years, SillyTavern has become the leading frontend for local AI roleplay. But what was the original goal when you started developing SillyTavern? Did you think it would become as popular as it is now?
Cohee
Let’s first clarify that SillyTavern doesn’t position itself as a roleplaying frontend. We purposefully avoid specifying any use cases in the README or official docs. “For power users” or, more informally, “for nerds” has always been part of the tagline because it reflects the intention.
We provide a sandbox platform without any predefined purpose or goals (think Garry’s Mod), and you shape it to your unique needs using the tools the community provides.
This requires a certain mindset and specific problem-solving or technical skills (like reading the docs, lol) that the average person seeking just a roleplay tool may lack. When someone runs into problems during installation or demands spoon-feeding, I usually say, “It’s okay if it’s not for you.” Accessibility for everyone was never the goal. If you struggle right at the gate, you’ll keep struggling, so it’s better to give up early and find something simpler and more accessible, it works out better for everyone.
When I first opened an IDE to dissect the original TavernAI, I didn’t expect the derivative to become more popular than the original, let alone leading the “industry”. What’s even more interesting is that our growth was entirely organic, spreading almost exclusively through word of mouth, forums, and unofficial guides. As a team, we never did SEO, marketing, or partnerships to gain user recognition, apart from an occasional teaser post on Reddit or Discord in early 2023.
Fun fact: apparently, SillyTavern is huge in China (two communities with about 100k members each), but it’s largely still a mystery to me due to the language barrier.
RossAscends
It was early 2023 when Cohee and I started working on what would eventually become SillyTavern. It began as two unrelated mods to TavernAI. I had begun making UI and QoL tweaks, which were becoming popular, and Cohee was adding backend features like World Info. At the time, Cohee and I also happened to be in the Pygmalion discord, so we became acquainted that way.
After a few months, we ended up joining forces to make a hard fork of the project because the TavernAI developer had a slower cadence for accepting PRs than we were hoping for. That’s how SillyTavern was born.
Neither of us intended or expected it to reach the popularity it has today. I’m still flabbergasted when I find out how it’s being used around the world. Grassroots community-driven deployed ST instances serving 1000+ users. Turnkey ST solutions with a provided API key being sold on Chinese e-commerce sites.
Wolfsblvt
This is a question that can mostly be answered by Cohee and Ross, as those two started everything, and made the original fork. I didn’t join until quite some time later, when a dozen, likely already over a hundred, other contributors had already… contributed to SillyTavern. I’m going to abuse this question a bit and stretch it, so I can just tell how I discovered SillyTavern and what my goal was when I started developing for it.
I discovered the project multiple times over the span of a few months when researching how to run local LLMs. The last time, I stuck with it and actually made it work. I joined the Discord, and started asking some pretty dumb questions. Quick shout-out to all the very nice and dedicated helpers in the Discord, many of whom aren’t devs themselves or contributing directly to the code. Without you, most newcomers would have a much harder time – the tool is already hard enough to use 😀
Being a dev in my main job, I quickly found areas where I thought, “huh, that could need some improvements.” I asked about some features, and a lot of replies were “no one has spent the time to code it yet.” So… I decided, okay, then it’s me who starts to code it. I started with simple features, then quickly underestimated stuff that devolved into bigger projects, taking weeks to implement.
Cohee was always very nice and helpful, and had great feedback. In the beginning, I only coded stuff I wanted for myself. And I mostly stuck with that. But soon I took up feedback, questions, and reports from the server. I became a regular contributor. Some time later, Cohee asked me if I wanted to become a dev on the repo, and I said yes. That’s how I’m here.
So, I can’t really answer the last part of the question either. When I discovered SillyTavern, it was already popular. That’s how I found it.
The project has over 200 contributors, with you three leading it. Does it ever feel overwhelming being the lead developers for SillyTavern? What’s your thought process like when it comes to adding new features or making any significant changes?
Cohee
The stage of rapid growth for SillyTavern, when new features were being churned out several times a day, ended sometime in the last quarter of 2023. These days, I prefer adding new functionality as extensions, while the main repo is reserved for core features related to prompt building, API connections, server improvements, and so on. Overall, the development pace has gradually slowed down and stabilized at around one stable release per month.
In retrospect, supporting extensions (downloadable add-ons) has been a huge win, since it allows for a level of customization you’ll rarely see in “competing” software (quotes because there’s no real competition and we’re all friends). Extensions can do anything JavaScript can do: add their own UI, make API requests, interact with core code, or even run tiny LLMs directly in the browser.
The downside is that we have no control over the ecosystem. I haven’t seen any outright malicious extensions yet, but it’s bound to happen one day. So don’t install everything you see in the wild. (Insert the cliché “with great power” quote here).
If you ask “what I could have done better,” it would be relying less on the OG TavernAI architecture (or lack thereof). For example, I could have used a proper relational database instead of the file system, adopted more modern tooling, or gone with something more radical, like ditching the server part entirely. To be honest, even the post-fork code isn’t always perfect, and we’re somewhat infamous for that. But hey, at least it works… most of the time.
RossAscends
This will be best answered by Cohee, as he does the majority of day-to-day dev work and PR triage. My contributions have always been focused on user-facing QoL issues like UI and UX. Once you solve those things, you kind of ‘code yourself out of a job’, so to speak.
Furthermore, ST has reached a point of maturity such that most major feature additions are done through extensions. Users can make whatever they want without us needing to alter the core code. That paradigm is intentional.
There are recurring tongue-in-cheek discussions in the community about “SillyTavern 2”, which would be built on a ‘modern’ tech stack. I’m unsure if we will ever find the appetite for that, but who knows?
The closest thing I’ve felt to overwhelm when it comes to developing ST was in the very early days. I didn’t even know how to handle a GitHub repo, and was worried I would break something every time I made a commit! Once, I did delete one of the default characters we used to ship. RIP Aqua.
Wolfsblvt
Good question, but still easy enough to answer for me. No, not really. Might be for multiple reasons on my side. It is and always was a hobby project for me, so I invested time whenever I wanted and felt like it. I never really let the “pressure” of the community get to me. Also, mostly because it’s still Cohee who is [the] main dev, and makes the big decisions – whereas I’ll mostly collaborate and support.
I quickly picked up the “philosophy” of SillyTavern, what this tool can do, can’t do, is supposed to do, and what it isn’t. I just generally align most of my ideas with this. When it comes to what I work on, which new features I want to add, I have a huuuge to-do list that is ever-growing, and will likely never get smaller.
Just ideas, from small and reasonable ones, to big projects where I’ll likely never find the time for. I just pick whatever interests me the most. Sometimes I also pick stuff that I know others really want. In some ways, I like to make people happy, so that can also be a reason for what I choose to contribute.
Was there a specific feature that was difficult to implement but you’re proud to have added to SillyTavern?
Cohee
World Info (aka lorebooks) is something that’s easy to compare with other frontends, and it shows clearly where SillyTavern shines. Both names given to this feature are a bit misleading, as they don’t come close to describing its full potential.
“Prompt manager” would be the most fitting alternative, but that moniker is already taken by another subsystem. To put it into perspective: in your average frontend, this feature is just three and a half fields with simple key-value activation. In SillyTavern, each entry offers nearly a full screen of UI controls, with a learning curve similar to mastering a 4X strategy game.
As a result, you can handle every aspect of your prompt management entirely within the WI system and be proud of yourself. If I ever had the motivation to start a new frontend project from scratch, a system like our World Info would be its centerpiece.
RossAscends
QuickReplies stands out as a feature that began simple but bloomed into a powerhouse. It was not difficult to implement at first. I believe I pushed the MVP within a few hours. But later, after others integrated QuickReplies with features like Slash Commands, STScript, and World Info, it became a monolith that – if specced out from the start to include everything it does today – would’ve been a huge lift to implement. I may not have even tried.
There’s a dev lesson here: start small, then build out.
Zoomed Avatars (the large version of the character image you can see by clicking on an avatar in chat) is another instance of a simple feature that turned into a framework used by much more complex feature sets.
Finally, I have to mention MovingUI. It was difficult to implement correctly. Some say it’s still not great. It’s a bit of a black sheep.
Wolfsblvt
When I try to think of something to answer this question, I always trip over the word “difficult”. How do I judge what’s difficult to code? For me? For you?
Answering about what I’m proud of is much easier. First, I have to mention the tag management and (character) folder system. When I joined, SillyTavern had nearly no tools to manage or group characters. On purpose. After much nagging, Cohee implemented something called “bogus folders”.
The name already says it all. This happened before my time. They are still named like this today. I built on top of that structure. Expanded the ability to tag characters, filter by tags, sort the tags, and mark tags as drill-down folders that can hide or show characters.
Besides that, I put a lot of time and brain power into extending the existing World Info framework. Both with new settings, toggles, and UI updates. The most impressive things there were still done by Cohee, but I think with all the additions together, the whole tooling is so powerful that nearly any question “Can I do X with World Info?” being asked can be answered with “Yes, if you combine A, B and C and configure it like D.” There is an immensely high skill ceiling, but you can do a lot with it.
What has been the most challenging aspect of developing and maintaining SillyTavern?
Cohee
We nerds may be great at coding, but not at communication. My rather strong opinions on some topics (like mobile support or a certain “fiery and foxy” browser) are so well known to the point of being a meta-meme in the official Discord.
Still, of all the time I put into ST, I’d rather spend it on development and technical discussions than on moderation, conflict resolution, or related activity. It’s often clear that we lack a dedicated community manager to bridge the gap between developers and users. Yet this decision is still in limbo. Choosing someone who is close to us but is still neutral enough to represent the entire team in [the] public eye is not easy.
RossAscends
Maintaining a productive balance in the Discord has been challenging at times. My philosophy for the server is that it should not be a primarily ‘social’ space, but rather a kind of Ivory Tower Think Tank for collaborators and invested users who really want to dig into everything ST can offer.
We have a few ‘gates’ in place to gently ward off low-effort individuals and to reduce noise in the server. Cliques still form every so often, and this usually comes hand in hand with issues between users. Eventually, those groups leave the server and form their own “ST-cord offshoot server”. I think there are more than half a dozen such servers now.
Another challenge is striking the balance between adding use-case-specific features and keeping our development process content-agnostic. There is a belief held by a portion of our users that SillyTavern is intended to be used for ‘erotic roleplay’. We do not deny that many do use ST for that, and we are not opposed to that use case.
But it’s like saying ‘Photoshop is intended to produce deepfakes’ based solely on the fact that it’s one of the possible things you can do with Photoshop. The challenge then comes when some users expect us to add features specifically for that use case, or vilify us when we do not cater to it specifically.
I think this comes down to a conceptual disconnect from people who are used to “AI Chat Sites” offering a single style of interaction. ST is not a platform. It’s a tool – like a Swiss Army knife. It can do many things. Use it however you like.
Wolfsblvt
One of the things that nearly every dev with a public project other people use will run into – and even the contributors will get some of it – is expectations, expectations, and ingratitude. And of course, expectations. I mean, it’s open source. People contribute when they want. People use what is there. That should always be the spirit.
Still, often enough, you add a cool new feature, and the first replies you get from people using it are “But can it also do X?” “I thought it would work like Y,” or “Cool, but can you also add X, Y, and Z? That would help!”
You kinda have to learn how the community reacts most of the time. And grow a thicker skin. I know it usually isn’t said with bad intentions, so it’s okay. But if people out there want a tip, sometimes just saying “Thanks, I really love what you did. It’s great.” Can go a looooong long way toward motivating a dev.
Has the use of AI in coding and development affected SillyTavern in any way?
Cohee
I personally use GitHub Copilot (it’s free for open-source contributors in large repos) for simple autocomplete, writing docs, fixing grammar in strings, and so on. The vibe coding approach works well for starting new projects, but less so for maintaining complex or legacy codebases. AI coding agents typically start to choke around the 10k line mark, and SillyTavern is an order of magnitude larger than that.
Vibe coded contributions are usually instantly recognizable (they all step on the same rake) and unusable without substantial rework and thorough review, since they won’t be maintainable in the long run.
For example, AI code models often remove unrelated console logs, add pointless comments, and show a strong tendency to reinvent the wheel. Ninety-nine percent of these issues could be avoided if contributors simply reviewed their PRs before submitting them. It doesn’t matter who wrote the patch, my review and testing process before merging is always the same, and the rules apply to everyone.
RossAscends
I don’t get the feeling that we receive a deluge of buggy vibe coded PRs to sift through. More commonly, the issue is a mismatch between the intent and scope of ST and the desires of the person making the PR.
I believe most people writing code today are doing it with at least a little bit of help from coding assistants. Those tools have been a great help to me.
Wolfsblvt
I mean, AI and AI coding support were there before SillyTavern started, so both kinda grew next to each other. Still, in recent times, with AI coding tools and IDE integrations getting better and easier to use, the amount of use has increased, too.
Has it affected SillyTavern? Not really, I think. The code quality doesn’t suffer, because all pull requests are vetted, both in functionality and code quality/style, by us devs, before they even get merged. We do get “vibe coding” pull requests from time to time – and yes, it feels like it happens more often in the last year or so.
Generally, it’s not too bad, but it requires manual corrections. The only really difficult stuff is the vibe coded pull requests that rework whole features, or add big things. They often do so much in a weird way or change stuff they shouldn’t do, that it’s easier to simply start with the pull request idea from scratch than trying to fix what the AI did.
I do not mind using AI coding tools. I use them myself daily. It’s just important to know what they are good at and what they aren’t. And of course, to always vet what the AI writes. If you do not understand what it did, it’s gonna be difficult to maintain.
SillyTavern’s community is incredible! It’s full of talented people who share their work, including characters, presets, extensions, and more. Thanks to them, this hobby never gets boring. There’s always something you can use to enhance your experience. How did you foster such a creative and passionate community?
Cohee
The most interesting part is that we did nothing to create the community, it self-organized naturally without our involvement. Even the “official” Discord and Reddit were not created by us, but became official once we recognized them and collaborated with their creators.
Some community resources (like the SillyTavernAI.com website) were even mistaken for official until I convinced the creator to add a large banner stating that it was fan-made, we have nothing to do with it, and anything written on it is not an official statement. Our web presence, outside of the documentation site, is notably sparse, and it will likely stay that way. The documentation is the front page and your best friend.
Overall, I don’t think there’s a single unified entity such as “the SillyTavern community.” Instead, there are a dozen or so subcommunities, or “bubbles,” usually centered around a specific API or backend. Members of these groups rarely interact across sub-cliques. Their only common trait is that they use the same frontend.
For some newcomers, there’s a noticeable absence (compared to similar apps or websites) of a built-in way to share your creations directly from the app. All the sample characters available for download in the assets list are past contest winners.
So far, this has only been beneficial – you bring your own content from elsewhere, and we don’t have to moderate it, pay server costs, or take responsibility for anything you might find in there. It’s no coincidence that the hard fork happened around the time OG TavernAI introduced CharaCloud – we took a different path.
However, out of all the things that Humi (the first developer behind TavernAI) invented, the concept of character cards (although an obvious calque from the NovelAI PNG lorebooks) was the most ingenious.
For many, it helps sell the illusion that it’s no longer just a system prompt attached to a picture. In their eyes, it becomes a personality construct with its own thoughts and dreams. Many unofficial ST UI themes place the picture at the forefront, sometimes making it occupy up to 25% of the screen real estate. For me, that’s a waste of precious pixels that could be filled with another toolbar of buttons, but hey, you know what they say about opinions.
RossAscends
Partially answered [earlier] – we lean into the collaborative ‘workshop’ aspect. We have expectations of users right up front – right there in the tagline – “the LLM front end for Power Users”. It’s a challenge; an invitation. Yes, it’s complex. Yes, there’s a steep learning curve if you want to dig deep. But if tinkering is your thing, you have a home here.
ST speaks to creative and tech-savvy individuals. We seek to give the user the maximum amount of agency and control – not only in their interactions with LLMs, but also in their use of ST itself.
Everyone’s install of ST is like a DIY project – custom themes, different combinations of extensions, unique workflows. People are proud of their creations and the knowledge they acquired along the creation journey. In turn, they are eager to share with others. We do our best to foster that atmosphere in the community.
Wolfsblvt
Yes! I already called them out in an earlier question. It’s amazing how people get together, from so many different parts, and often with very, very diverse interests.
That’s the great thing about ST. There is no single use case, there are hundreds, thousands. And still, people use one common tool, and help each other out.
I do not have much influence on fostering the community myself, though. Community management is mostly Ross’ thing, and I just… am part of the community myself, from time to time.
In recent years, several online AI roleplay platforms have appeared that make users “lock in” to their frontend and benefit from user-generated content. They don’t allow exporting any data, and often lack basic features or hide them behind paywalls. What are your thoughts on such platforms?
Cohee
I think there’s little overlap between the target audience of the platforms in question and SillyTavern. We also don’t try to position ST as a “better alternative” to some other app, like “Character AI but uncensored” or “ChatGPT but local.”
That said, we sometimes experience waves of “refugees” whenever another app decides to “pull the rug” by tightening moderation, raising usage costs, closing the source, and so on. They’re always welcome if they can accept that here we do things a little differently.
I never saw this as an opportunity to cash in on the AI craze. We all have day jobs that pay the bills. Developing and maintaining SillyTavern costs us nothing beyond a negligible monthly domain name fee and occasional LLM API expenses for testing. Passion is the only thing that drives us forward.
My ideology has always been that SillyTavern will stay 100% hobby-driven and non-commercial, with absolutely no monetization, and it will never accept donations for the project as a whole (though if an individual contributor wants to open donations, that’s fine).
In my opinion, monetary ties create an unwanted social contract between developers and “steakholders” (typo intentional). Everyone is equal here; you can’t say, “I paid you a dollar, now add that feature that will take 30 hours to build.”
RossAscends
To say I see them as a purely negative presence would be overstepping. They are just a different kind of thing. They are not tools. They are products. They are entertainment platforms that require users to first make their own toys and then pay to play with them.
To be fair, there is an audience for that kind of thing: some users just want a turnkey solution that allows them to start chatting within 3 clicks. There’s value in the convenience factor, especially if the service is providing the LLM compute themselves.
But it becomes unappealing once you get to the point of locking basic features behind paywalls, preventing data sharing (No character downloads! No unapproved API connections!), and ultimately end up restricting content. Users resent and rebel against such services. You end up in a cat and mouse game with them. There have been many such cases in the short time that AI Roleplay has been a thing.
Wolfsblvt
SaaS (software as a service) has been growing constantly over the last two decades, and I think we are by far nowhere near the end of it. It’s just a thing we have to live with. Generally speaking, subscription-based models have an easier time planning revenue and reinvesting into the software.
In good cases, that can be a huge plus for the consumer/customer. Of course, those models will do many things to keep you as a subscriber. Locking your data is one of those options that raises the barrier to leaving your service. From a business standpoint, I totally understand how this works and why they do it, and it’s hard to be strongly opposed to it.
I don’t think I see their presence as either positive or negative. They are just… there. And they have good reasons to exist, and a lot of customers who are likely happy with what they get. They are easier to use. They often have good documentation, good support, easy UIs, consistent updates…
I am not sure there is a big overlap with SillyTavern. I always think about the last 3D printer I bought, where I paid for it to be shipped fully assembled. It was just easier, and I didn’t want to spend the time to build it myself. And I am happy with it.
Same thing you can say about PC building. Buying prebuilt, or configuring and assembling yourself? You could argue it’s always better to build it yourself, and you might be right. But saving 6+ hours of work to assemble and having two years warranty on assembly could be worth it for you, even if you then don’t know how to replace your graphics card.
What are your favorite go-to foods and drinks for long coding sessions?
Cohee
Drinks: anything that tingles my taste buds the right way: Red Bull, Dr. Pepper, my favorite blend of Earl Grey tea.
Foods: don’t snack behind the keyboard, kids, it makes it dirty and greasy. Also, ice cream.
RossAscends
I am unspecific when it comes to food. I don’t eat at my desk. I have a giant cup of coffee first thing after waking up, and keep a 2-liter thermos of water on my desk at all times. Aside from that, I eat whatever my wife cooks. If it’s late at night and I just want to get back to coding, I’ll down a couple boiled eggs and get back to it.
Wolfsblvt
I am one of those “don’t eat until I am in my relax phase” people. So when I do long coding sessions, be it for work or for SillyTavern, I’ll code until I am done. Then make food, plop down on my couch, and watch a movie before going to bed. Even if that means I start cooking at 3 am. If it’s too late, I just don’t eat food. Healthy, eh?
For drinks, usually I’ll just drink unsweetened cold tea. Two tea bags in a 1-liter carafe, sitting next to my desk, and I’ll get a glass from time to time. Especially in summer, I really like drinking those chilled mixed beers. Schöfferhofer Grapefruit, I love it. (No, I usually don’t drink beer) But especially during the weekends, on longer coding sessions, I’ll also open a bottle of wine or a good whiskey, or get my favorite Jäger-Coke mix, and try to find the sweet spot of “with alcohol you can code better”. Also not very healthy, but fun. And you only live once.
What introduced you to AI Roleplay? And what is your favorite genre of roleplay?
Cohee
I once saw a meme that was a screenshot of a Character AI chat with the “Super Mario 64” character, and I decided to check it out for myself. I didn’t stay there for more than five minutes, as the thought of “you can likely run this locally!” immediately struck me. I had some prior experience running KoboldAI and NovelAI, and I had just bought a used RTX 3090 for local experiments with Stable Diffusion.
After some research, I stumbled upon a now-deleted Reddit page that mentioned Pygmalion and Text Generation WebUI (oobabooga). From there, I found out about the TavernAI frontend and used it with Kobold United with Pygmalion 6B to run some very primitive self-made characters (I was never a good character writer).
It wasn’t long before I started to look deeper and decided to contribute to TAI, beginning with adding a World Info subsystem, which was a direct port from KoboldAI. Then came group chats, and eventually we combined efforts with Ross and started reworking the UI, exposing hidden switches and knobs, and adding the overall “power user” grease to all the axles.
When the number of additions grew too large to count, I decided to hard fork from the TAI codebase, and Ross stayed with ST. The last common commit between [the] two projects was somewhere in February 2023.
An attentive reader may notice that I don’t talk about “roleplay” itself, but that’s because I almost never do it these days. I find it hard to immerse myself in AI-driven fiction, especially when you’re so deep into the technicalities and inner workings of language models and their surrounding infrastructure. But if I had to pick a genre to reinvigorate my passion for, I’d probably choose an IM simulation, something like simple, wacky chatting with an online friend.
RossAscends
The first time I tried ‘talking to’ my computer was back in 2003? I came across an old MS-DOS program from the 90s called MegaHAL. It wasn’t an LLM. I think it used Markov chains or something. The idea was [that] you would ‘teach’ the ‘AI’ to make sentences by just throwing text at it repeatedly until it identified patterns between words. You were essentially self-training the thing by hand with manual inputs. So the seed of interest was planted way back then.
My first awareness of LLMs would’ve been the Replika app, back around 2015. That was before it became the thirst trap it is today. It was still just a little egg in the middle of your phone screen. The AI tried to mimic you. It wasn’t very good. I didn’t use it much.
The first time I realized that LLM interactions had huge creative potential was when I tried AI Dungeon. This probably would’ve been around 2018. But the metaphor there was more akin to text adventure games.
I didn’t have the concept of ‘AI Roleplay’ until I encountered CharacterAI in mid-2022. I had been using it for a few months before OpenAI locked down their API policy (which tanked AI Dungeon and Replika). CharacterAI soon went that way as well, with strict content policies, so I went looking for freer spaces. That’s how I found the TavernAI and Pygmalion communities, which were focused on AI roleplay using local inference and open-weight models.
As for the second portion of the question – I don’t have a favorite ‘genre’, per se. My LLM use is mostly focused on seeing what I can get the model to do, how well it can do it, and how reliably. I like to be surprised. Lately, DeepSeek 3.1 is surprising me.
Wolfsblvt
I think, like many others, one of the first specific AI Roleplay moments I had was when I stumbled upon Character.AI. I am pretty sure my first exposure to that was through Reddit and people memeing about character replies. It was really fun, and popping up on my front page regularly, so I tried it myself. I don’t think I have ever used Character.AI for longer than a few minutes, but I liked the idea.
During that time, I was also falling deep down into the rabbit hole that is Hololive (VTubers, livestreamers with an avatar/character – that are also idols). During that time, they were already so big that you were just one of thousands of others in chat, and I kind of just… wanted to talk to them. That’s where my original research into SillyTavern started. I found a few nice character cards of some of those VTubers, and I knew this SillyTavern tool made it possible to talk to them. So I spent multiple weekends setting it up.
As for my favorite genre of roleplay, it’s the one that I actually do. We ST devs regularly meme about it, but it’s like… very true. You do so much tinkering, so much tweaking, and in the end, there isn’t much time for roleplay anymore. Think Skyrim mods, and actually playing Skyrim.
But generally, I have tried a few different genres and ways of roleplaying. Most of them sadly get stale for me quite fast. We are still at a point where the models just write so obviously that half of the replies are stuff you know beforehand, and the other half is just the same as it is used in a dozen other chats. That doesn’t mean I don’t do it from time to time and still enjoy it, but I get disappointed quite fast.
Though recently I have tried a new system with better results, where I use my “character card” as more of a scenario description, and I don’t play a role or character myself, but am more of an instructor/director of the story. A bit like those CYOA stories, like reading a book where I can decide where it is going next.
I also wanted to build a language-learning character card with SillyTavern extension integration for translations, dictionary lookup, and more, but… time. No time.
We grew up with games and other forms of entertainment that were often vilified and seen as a bad influence. What is your opinion on the future generation growing up with AI roleplay and AI companionship as sources of entertainment?
Cohee
You don’t have to look far, it’s already happening. AI and its potential influence on the economy and people is already a major point of discussion in the media, and the sentiment is even less accepting than toward D&D in its “devilish” days. This is especially true for AI roleplay and AI girlfriends, whose users are often portrayed as losers or freaks. That’s one of the reasons I’d prefer ST not to be associated with it.
It’s only a matter of time before governments decide to take control and regulate it to hell and back, as is the case with movies (MPA) and video games (ESRB). Regulating something like SillyTavern directly would be difficult since it’s just a bunch of code released under a free software license. But it’s much easier to restrict GPU sales or LLM API access, and without either, ST is essentially useless. There’s no “AI” in SillyTavern’s name, and that’s on purpose.
Anyway, enjoy it while it lasts.
RossAscends
This is a great question. My son is 13, and I would not want him engaging in the “AI Roleplay” space as it exists today. Speaking generally, kids growing up in the age of AI will be presented with a different set of challenges and easy pitfalls. There’s no easy solution to this aside from proper socialization and good parenting. I am more concerned with what the world will look like by the time my son is college age, when AI has had another decade of development under its belt.
You drew a comparison to video games, but there is a difference between the vilification of video games in our youth and what we see happening with AI today. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Video games were a simple medium with a singular purpose – entertainment. My friends and I played video games. My parents did not. Video games kept you indoors in front of a TV. Adults didn’t like that. It was a culture and mode of entertainment they didn’t understand and were not a part of.
On the other hand, today we have LLMs that are multipurpose tools being used by people of all ages. A PC is not strictly required, so the ‘always indoors’ stigma is not there.
AI interactions do receive negative press coverage (sometimes rightly so) and attempts at government regulation, but the animus behind them is different for AI than it was for video games. There was a “moral” aspect before, which is usually absent from contemporary derisions aimed at LLMs.
I think the fearmongering noise we occasionally see in the news and mass media is simultaneously both ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’. You have to really go looking in order to find someone writing seriously about the greater implications of AI. The simple immediacy and daily-life impact we had with video games is not present in the way AI is being covered today.
Wolfsblvt
If we are talking about children, I think this topic is very important and needs to have extensive research done. It’s already clear that AI will be part of our daily lives for the foreseeable future, so there is no way around that. Children will grow up with it being ever-present.
But should they actually engage with AI? We see kids using Amazon Alexa, and having fun with it. A few of the tech demos from OpenAI specifically featured kids, and how AI is helping them learn and solve homework. From my parents (teachers) I know that children in school are already using AI daily, for homework, for submissions, for the most basic questions even. Some use it for planning.
Specifically speaking about the part of companionship and source of entertainment, it’s a slippery slope. We already see lots of adults struggling with companionships and relationships with AI. This topic has been pushed more into the public space in recent weeks/months, especially since the launch of GPT-5.
I feel like using a tool without at least understanding the basics of how it works is always a bit risky. Especially if the tool can talk back. For children, this applies even more.
I am kinda rambling, because I don’t really have a good reply to this. And I am neither heavily opposed nor in favor of having younger people use AI for companionship and entertainment. So, I just repeat. I think it’s very important we do actual research. Instead of either condemning or embracing it openly.
What excites you most about AI and its future?
Cohee
Ever since high school, I dreamed of having a tool to turn thoughts into images, and Stable Diffusion was almost like a dream come true, with the prompt being just one last step between imagination and reality. Not that this has anything to do with yours truly being a shitty artist who could probably break a pencil in half just by holding it, lol.
When corporations brand themselves as “AI first” or “AI driven,” it usually means they want fewer employees doing more work, now that everyone has unrestricted ChatGPT access. A boring dystopia, as they say. I can’t predict the future, but we’ll see what happens when AI unicorns run out of VC money and chatting with your toaster turns out to be less appealing in reality than it looked on the pitch deck.
On the contrary, my wife is very excited about AI, to the point of being open to the idea of humanoid robots. She uses ChatGPT and SillyTavern daily, and some features, like user input preservation on reload or server availability checks before sending a prompt, were directly influenced by her feedback.
RossAscends
I’m a level-headed accelerationist when it comes to the future of AI. It’s going to get better, faster, and more optimized, of course, but the major change I see coming is in regards to the medium through which we interact with AI.
Currently, it’s by text and, awkwardly, by voice. There’s always some kind of screen involved. We have to type or talk, and then wait for a response. I don’t think that will be the case in the future. AR/VR will be an awkward stepping stone. The next big leap is beyond that.
Wolfsblvt
There are a lot of cool things AI could do that I am very much looking forward to. If we leave out the data privacy aspect for a moment, I am very excited about more seamless integrations. I discover something on a website, I tab to GPT, paste the link, write an explanation. If it’s about something where I’m logged in, I have to copy plaintext or make a screenshot. And then it’s often not even all the context needed. Which is annoying, and those multiple steps are often too much of a hassle.
What I’d love to see is AI actually being able to see my screen, access data I allow/provide. Query backends from other sites I am registered to. I track movies I watch, rate them, and have a watch list. Whenever I want to ask GPT about what to watch next, or recommendations similar to X, I have to screenshot or paste my data.
It only knows my movie taste from historic chats or the few favorites I listed in my bio. I know I can build a GPT integration via CustomGPTs, or just build a function-calling backend and add it to SillyTavern (and I am already doing that), but it’s a lot of work just to prepare one connection.
The marketing always talks about “managing your emails, calendar, and reminders”, which is of course great. But that’s just the surface. Once you can get more interconnected, and the AI can actually reliably do the stuff (without struggling, like it does most of the time at the moment), we are going to reach the next level. Saving so much time.
Another thing I want to add, out of personal interest, is AI usage in games. Not like generated maps or assets or that whole artist vs AI discussion, I don’t even wanna dive into that. I mean, AI-scripted dialogues, AI-generated characters with names, bio, history, and more. I know there are some prototypes. I know there are mods for Skyrim, some indie games utilizing this concept, and some recent “we train on your data” games that actually look really cool.
But the potential is literally endless. Imagine a Stardew Valley-like game where you can endlessly chat with the villagers, about life and everything. Where your spouse isn’t just repeating the same five lines after marriage. Imagine a gacha game where you can chat with the characters for hours, via phone or directly. Imagine.
Has SillyTavern changed your daily life in any significant way? Do you have any exciting plans for the future that you’d like to share?
Cohee
I don’t think many things have changed for me, apart from having less free time for other hobbies and occasional “today I learned” moments when it comes to writing code in JavaScript. However, having to interact with people on social platforms more than ever before has made my personality harsher and more abrasive (though I’m really trying to be nicer, honest).
No big plans for now, just vibes, hopes, and dreams. Stay silly.
RossAscends
My involvement with ST has changed my life dramatically. It’s the first ‘coding project’ I’ve ever been involved in. Unlike Cohee and Wolf, I’ve never worked in IT and had never been in an IT-focused community before. I played with QBASIC back in the mid-90s and made some e-commerce sites for past employers, but that was it.
I learned Javascript and Python while working on ST, and doing so reignited my love for ‘making things’. My career intentions have shifted in these past few years. Some opportunities have come up, and I’m eagerly leaning in.
Aside from that, I have a few ideas floating around. I’d like to do something meaningful with SillyTavern Multiplayer, and I’ve been developing side projects with Flutter lately.
I leave it up to the reader to speculate what that might imply.
Wolfsblvt
Not really in a significant way, but it did change a few things. Of course, it got me a lot more invested into AI and all topics AI-related. Which is helping me a lot at work, because in every sector of the IT industry, AI is all people talk about. So naturally, my boss is, too. Being knowledgeable when talking with him, having suggestions and stuff, really helps.
On the other hand, SillyTavern led me to work a lot more with JavaScript (again). Still hate it. It’s a disgusting language and shouldn’t exist like it does, but I think I still got kinda good [at] it. JS is quite important in many parts, and we need it at work too. So yeah, it helps. Also, always broadening your horizon as a dev, not being stuck with the same stuff daily, is just very good for your future.
Exciting plans? Huh boy. I should not mention my huge to-do list again, especially considering that in recent months I kinda took a break from working on SillyTavern, for personal reasons. But yes, there are some things planned. The biggest one might be Macros 2.0, which is… like many things, kind of a meme in the ST community. We talked about it far more than a year ago already. I will finish it. For sure. And it’ll be great. Of course.
(For anyone who doesn’t know, macros are what we call text replacement placeholders in our prompts, which get mostly used in character cards and World Info. From char and persona names, to random number picks to variables you can increment to… many other things.)
A Versatile Frontend For Power Users, Backed By A Passionate Community
SillyTavern is a versatile frontend designed for power users. The developers offer a powerful sandbox tool that you can customize as you like, and they are unapologetic about its steep learning curve. SillyTavern requires time and effort from you, and it rewards you with unmatched control over your experience.
SillyTavern’s principles have also ensured that the project remains free, open-source, and non-commercial. The developers could have capitalized on the project’s fame, along with their professional connections, to monetize the frontend. But it’s their ideology, a gentleman’s agreement with TavernAI’s developer, and SillyTavern’s principles that continue to keep the project independent.
Using SillyTavern along with a backend to run LLMs locally gives you complete control over your data and experience. Getting started with SillyTavern can be intimidating since it has a learning curve, but the official documentation, user-created guides, and its helpful community make it easier to get started.
- SillyTavern’s official documentation.
- SillyTavern’s Discord server and r/SillyTavernAI subreddit.
- Our guide on Optimizing SillyTavern for AI Roleplay and other learning resources.
