Initial Messages

Initial messages are great for helping the AI get into character. The format of the initial messages (explained in this document) allows you to:

• Hide initial messages from the user: In case you have many messages that would be annoying for the user to see every time they start a new conversation with the character.
• Hide initial messages from the AI: To, for example, provide user instructions or character creator credit/attribution at the top of the chat - stuff you want the user to see, but not the AI.
• Create system messages: These are used to guide the behavior of the AI, or provide information/context in situations where it wouldn't make sense for the AI or the user to "say" it.

Initial messages should follow the following format:

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[AI]: This is the first AI message.
[USER]: This is the user's response.
[AI]: This is the second AI message.
[SYSTEM]: Here's a system message. Use system messages to help guide the AI.

You can hide messages from the ai or the user like this:

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[AI; hiddenFrom=user]: This message is spoken by the AI and is hidden from the user.
[SYSTEM; hiddenFrom=ai]: This message is spoken by the System and is hidden from the AI.

You can add/override a name for a message like this:

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[SYSTEM; name=Bob]: This message is sent from Bob

You can combine multiple properties using a comma between them:

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[SYSTEM; name=Bob, hiddenFrom=ai]: This message is sent from Bob and hidden from the ai

Messages can be multi-line. For example, this is valid:

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[AI]: This is the first AI message.
It has two lines.
[USER]: This is the user's response.
It also has two lines.

As with all messages, you can include markdown/HTML. Here's an example of an initial message the provides instructions to the user, and has an image embedded:

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[SYSTEM; hiddenFrom=ai]: Hello there! Thanks for trying out my character. Here are some tips:
* Make sure to edit the character's response if they break character. You'll probably only have to do this for the first few messages, at most.
* ...

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/TFA2Nmx.jpg">

See the latest versions of my characters at my twitter account: [@exampleusername](https://twitter.com/exampleusername)