The guide
Bring your character with you.
Characterly imports standard character cards — the .png and .json files the whole community already uses — as private AI companions that live in your Discord DMs. If you have a .jsonl chat export, your history comes too, so they remember you from the first hello.
How it works
Join the Characterly server, link a free account, and run /companion import with your card file attached. The card's persona, greeting, and example dialogue come across; the import is safety-screened, and the companion lands private to your roster — nothing is published unless you choose to put it on the shelf.
To carry a conversation history over, attach a .jsonl or .json chat export to the same import. The turns distill into the companion's journal rather than a raw transcript — so the memory is real, inspectable, and yours to edit or forget.
Cards we accept
- Formats
chara_card_v2,ccv3, and flat v1 cards (including CAI Tools aliases)- PNG cards
- The embedded
charaorccv3chunk — a corrupt chunk won't hide a valid one - Size limits
- 8 MB for a
.pngcard, 256 KB for a.jsoncard
If your card exporter produces something else, it almost always emits one of these under the hood — try it; a rejected file gets a plain-language reason, never a silent drop.
Chat exports we accept
- Formats
- Tavern-style
.jsonl(what CAI Tools' "Download as Tavern chat" produces), oobabooga.json, generic message arrays, and flagless exports - Size limits
- 8 MB, 4,000 turns, 1,500 characters per turn — a longer history imports its first 4,000 turns, the foundation of the relationship
- Multi-character chats
- The dominant non-you speaker wins — two personas never blend into one companion
To get a .jsonl export from a chat you still have elsewhere: most community tools (CAI Tools and similar) offer "Download as Tavern chat" or a raw .json export — either works.
If something goes wrong
- Import interrupted
- It resumes where it left off — processed windows are kept, unprocessed ones were never billed
- Out of tokens mid-import
- The import parks and resumes when your tokens refill; nothing is lost
- Hard failure
- Partial journal entries roll back with it — a failed import never leaves a half-remembered history
- Changed your mind
/companion importslists every import and undoes any of them, journal entries and all
What a card becomes
An imported companion isn't a re-skin. It gets the same memory model as a native one — facts about you that it keeps only with your consent, a private thread in your DMs, and the ability to follow you into servers you own. Cards stay private by default; publishing to the community shelf is a separate, moderated step.