An AI character card is a portable character: a small file that holds everything a chat app needs to play someone, from their name and personality to their first message and a lorebook about their world. Cards let people share characters between sites and apps instead of retyping them. This guide explains what's inside a card, the difference between the V2 and V3 formats, how to write a good one, and how to bring a card into NuraMate.
What is a character card?
Most cards are a PNG image with the character's data hidden inside it. The picture is what you see in a gallery; the character itself sits in a text chunk of the image file, encoded as JSON. Some cards are plain .json files with the same data and no picture. Either way, the app that reads the card ignores the pixels and pulls out the text.
The format grew out of community roleplay front ends and character-sharing sites, and became a de facto standard because it's simple: one file, one character, readable by any app that follows the spec.
What's inside a card
A card is a set of named fields. The ones you'll meet most often:
- name: the character's name.
- description: who they are. Appearance, background, situation. Often the longest field.
- personality: a short summary of how they think and behave.
- scenario: where the story starts and what's going on.
- first_mes: the greeting, the first message the character sends.
- mes_example: example dialogue that shows how the character talks.
- character_book: an optional lorebook, a list of entries with keywords that add world details only when they come up.
- creator_notes, tags, alternate_greetings: extras for people browsing the card, and alternative openings.
Cards use two placeholders: {{char}} for the character's name and {{user}} for yours. "{{char}} pours {{user}} a coffee" becomes "Mira pours Alex a coffee" in the chat.
V1, V2 and V3: what's the difference?
- V1 was a flat list of the basic fields: name, description, personality, scenario, first message and example dialogue.
- V2 wrapped those fields in a
data object and added the embedded lorebook, alternate greetings, creator notes, tags and version information. In a PNG it's stored under the key chara. Most cards you'll find today are V2.
- V3 extends V2 with more options (for example extra assets) and is stored under the key
ccv3. Many V3 cards also carry a V2 copy for older apps.
For everyday use the difference rarely matters: the core fields are the same, and a good importer reads whichever version it finds.
How to write a good character card
- Lead with specifics, not adjectives. "Runs a night bakery, hums when she's nervous, never finished art school" gives the AI more to work with than "kind, creative, shy".
- Keep the description focused. Everything in it is read for every reply. Who they are, how they speak, what they want. Move side details to the lorebook.
- Make the greeting an invitation. A place, an action and something to answer. Don't write your character's words or actions for them. Our first message guide has 20 examples.
- Use example dialogue to set the voice. Two or three short exchanges teach texting style better than a paragraph describing it.
- Put the world in lore entries. Places, people, events, objects, each with a few distinctive keywords. See what a lorebook is and how to write one.
- Keep characters adults. State the age if it matters to the story, and make sure nothing in the card suggests otherwise.
How to import a character card into NuraMate
NuraMate's character creator can read a card for you. Open Create a character, open the box labeled "Bringing a character from Character.AI? Paste it here", and use Or upload a character card (.png or .json).
- Pick the card file. It's read in your browser; files over 8 MB are turned away.
- NuraMate looks for a V3 card first and falls back to V2, then maps the fields: the greeting comes from
first_mes, the personality from personality, and the description, scenario and example dialogue are combined into the definition.
- Enabled lorebook entries with keywords come along too, up to 30 of them. Each entry keeps up to 10 keywords and 1,000 characters.
- Choose Import. The AI spreads the card across NuraMate's fields (personality, backstory, texting style, scenario, greeting) and turns details that don't fit into extra lore entries.
- Fill in anything still missing, such as occupation or city, review the result, and create the character.
Good to know: the picture inside a PNG card isn't imported. Describe your character's look in the Appearance and outfit field instead. Alternate greetings and creator notes are also left out, so copy over anything you want to keep. An import can hold up to 40,000 characters in total, and imports and AI drafts share an allowance of 10 a day.
Every imported card goes through the same checks as a character written from scratch: characters must be adults, and nothing explicit. Cards that don't meet that are declined.
Which plan do I need?
Creating your own characters, including imported ones, is part of the Plus and Pro plans. On the Free plan you can chat with any of the ready-made companions; you can see what each plan includes on the pricing page.
Moving characters from Character.AI
Character.AI doesn't export cards, but you can still bring a character across: copy its name, greeting, description and definition into the same import box and choose Import. Our guide to exporting your Character.AI chats covers saving those fields before anything changes.
