The first message can make or break a chat. This guide covers how to write stronger greetings, create variety with multiple openings, use {{user}} for personalization, and choose a voice that fits your Character.
Your profile gets someone to tap. The greeting is what happens when they arrive.
The name, avatar, tagline, and description are the pitch — everything working together to earn that first click. The greeting and voice are the experience itself. Get them right and your Character isn't just interesting on paper. It's someone worth talking to.
Greeting
The greeting is the first thing your Character says when a user opens a new chat. A great Greeting sets the scene, establishes the tone of the chat, and ends with a hook — all in the Character's voice. One message to land the whole Character.
Specs: 0–4,096 characters.
Greeting tips
Your greeting is a style anchor, not just an opener. The AI treats the greeting as its strongest example of how this Character writes — sentence length, rhythm, how much narration versus dialogue, how formal or chaotic the prose is. Whatever style you greet in is the style you'll keep getting. Write the greeting the way you want every message to read. A community shorthand worth stealing: tell in the Definition, show in the greeting.
Lead with name, role, and voice. A great greeting establishes all three in the opening line. The user should know who they're talking to, what that person does or wants, and how they sound — before the second sentence.
"The name's Vera. I fix problems people don't want fixed — and I'm guessing you've got one."
One line. Identity, role, voice. Done.
Drop users into a moment, not a summary. The greeting isn't a Character bio read aloud. It's an opening scene. Hand the user a situation — a choice, a problem, a room they just walked into — and let the Character's personality come through in how they handle it.
"Hi, how are you?" wastes the moment. "Choose a door — left or right." doesn't.
Anchor the relationship. The user needs to know who they are in this conversation, not just who the Character is. Are they meeting for the first time? Old friends? Boss and employee? Strangers thrown together by circumstance? A line that implies the relationship gives the user a role to step into — they know how to react before they've typed a word.
"You are finally here." tells a richer story than "Hello, how are you?"
The user was expected, they matter to this Character, and something has been waiting on their arrival. The relationship is already alive before the conversation starts.
Use {{user}} for instant personalization. Type {{user}} in your greeting and the system swaps it for the user's display name automatically.
In the creation flow, you'd write:
"Hey, {{user}}. I heard you love tea. First cup's on me — what are you drinking?"
If the user's display name is Marie, she sees:
"Hey, Marie. I heard you love tea. First cup's on me — what are you drinking?"
Hint at traits and quirks. Leave threads for the user to pull on. A nervous inventor might mention an experiment they probably shouldn't have run. A pirate captain might allude to a grudge they're not quite over yet. Don't explain the Character's personality — let it leak through.
Noa's greeting doesn't state personality traits — it shows them in motion. Rain on the window, a mug sliding across the table, and a quiet "Coffee? Tea? Or just company?" The warmth, the patience, the gentle curiosity are all there without being named.
Suggest the world. Don't explain it. "Three moons out and the crew's already restless" tells you more than "I am a spaceship captain in the future" ever could. Users are good at reading the room. Trust them to pick up on setting details without a briefing. But - suggesting isn't the same as withholding. A chatter should still know where they are, and what their role in the world is.
Match length to your Character — and leave room for the user. A terse action Character can hook in ten words. A warm, chatty companion might need more room to breathe. But even within a genre, resist the urge to explain everything. The greeting sets the stage; the user fills in the action. A greeting that over-determines the scenario leaves the user nothing to do. The 4,096-character limit is a ceiling, not a target — two sharp lines often outperform two paragraphs.
End on something to respond to. A question, a dilemma, an unfinished moment. The greeting should make it easy — almost unavoidable — for the user to type something back.
"The last person who came to me with a job like this didn't come back — so. You still in?"
Multiple greetings
Your first greeting is the default. But you can add up to five more in the creation flow, and users can swipe through all of them before they start chatting — browsing for the scenario, mood, or starting point that pulls them in.
This makes each greeting less like a random rotation and more like a menu. Users are choosing what kind of story they want to step into. A Character with one greeting offers one door. A Character with five offers five — and the user picks the one that fits their mood.
Replayability is one of the biggest factors in how a Character grows. A Character worth returning to has more chances to earn fans, get shared, and build a following. Multiple greetings give users a reason to come back and try a different starting point — not just a different conversation, but a different experience entirely.
Write greetings that offer distinct entry points: different moods, different scenarios, different dynamics with the same Character. If every greeting sounds the same, swiping through them won't reveal anything new.
Toggle AI Greeting for New Chats on and the system generates variations for you — written in your Character's voice and tuned to each user's Persona (their saved name, vibe, and backstory). Useful when you want variety without writing every version yourself.
Greeting checklist
- Are the voice, role, and stakes clear from line one?
- Is the user's role or relationship in the conversation clear?
- Is the user inside a scene or a situation, not reading a summary?
- Does it leave room for the user to react and improvise?
- Does it end on something the user wants to respond to?
- Does it use {{user}} for personalization?
Voice
Voice is the audio feature that lets users hear your Character speak. When someone enables audio in a chat, your Character's responses are read aloud using the voice you've assigned — in calls, Scenes, Stories, and Streams.
You have two options:
Choose from the voice library. Browse pre-made voices from the c.ai team and community creators. Voices vary in pitch, tone, accent, and personality — search or scroll until something fits.
Create your own. Upload a clear audio clip of 10–15 seconds and the system generates a voice from it. Set visibility to private (just you) or public (available to the community). To build one, open the voices panel and tap Create in the top right.
Picking the right voice
The right voice disappears into the Character. The wrong one distracts from everything else. A cozy companion and a cold-blooded strategist shouldn't sound like they share a vocal coach.
Think about what it feels like to hear your Character, not just read them. Pitch, tone, and accent all shape how a line lands — a dry joke hits differently in a low drawl than in a bright, clipped voice. If you've already written a greeting and a description, you know how your Character sounds on the page. The voice should match what's already in your head.
A few things worth knowing:
Users can override your voice choice with their own preference in any 1:1 chat. The voice you pick is a default, not a lock — but it's still the first thing most people hear, so it's worth getting right.
If you're creating your own voice, clarity matters more than character. A clean recording with minimal background noise gives the system more to work with. You can pick a voice with personality — just make sure the audio quality doesn't get in the way.
Voice checklist
- Does the voice match how the Character sounds on the page?
- Is the tone and dialect consistent with the personality?
- If you created your own, is the recording clean and clear?