Creating A New Custom Persona

1. Select a Custom Persona Slot

You must have an Unoccupied Custom Persona Slot in your persona Gallery to create a new custom persona. Navigate to the Persona Gallery page (use sidebar menu to get there) and locate an unoccupied slot.

Select the slot. You will be taken to the Forge. The card will now contain a blank Personality Knot Sigil and you will see four editors and a Deployment selector. The sigil will serve as an alternative visual identifier in the application.

2. Establish Identity

Select Identity to open the identity editor. This is where you specify how your agent is identified in text (name), as well as visually (physical attributes unrelated to personality).

Enter the name of your agent then enter physical attributes like age, sex, hair color and ancestry. These will be used later to produce a portrait that serves as a visual index in your library of agent personas.

3. Craft a Core Personality

Select Core Personality to open the core personality editor. This is where the heart of a NeoThymos persona is crafted.

You will see the Pre-Set Selector drop-down (for copying an archetype or library Personality as your starting point) and the star shaped personality editor with its six points for the six HEXACO domains plus a central region representing the Altruism facet. You begin designing a synthetic personality by adjusting these seven values.

Note: You can only edit the personality of an unlocked persona. Once a persona is locked and synthesized these values and the persona’s identity are frozen.

The pre-set selector (optional)

Your agent’s core personality will start out with all personality domain values set to a neutral value of 50 (range 1-100). You can use this starting point to build a personality “from scratch” or begin by using the values of one of the predefined NeoThymos archetype personalities or one of your own that you have stored in your library. (You can also reset all values to 50 to start over.)

We recommend using one of the pre-defined archetype personalities as the starting point for your first custom personality (the Pre-Set Selector’s Copy Archetype Personality choice). Then simply adjust the values from that starting point to make it your own. Select Archetype in the drop-down to inspect the selection of archetypes and then choose an archetype from the selection dialog.

Personality Editor

On the star shaped editor, if you you can now set each of the six domains of personality (plus the Altruism facet) to reflect the level of that domain you want to be reflected in your agent’s behavior.

4. Fine Tune Personality

Select a personality domain (click the name or its jewel) to reveal the four facets that belong to it. Changing facet values here will cause the domain value to adjust since it is the average of the four trait values. When you lock 🔒 the domain, it’s value will not change, rather changing any facet value will cause the other three to adjust (so the average remains true).

5. Select a Target Runtime Environment

The files generated for you to configure your agent’s personality are determined by this selection. In the Working Deployment group, open Deployment Settings; the first field in the dialog is the Target Runtime Environment drop-down — use it to select an agent runtime environment, then save the dialog. The working deployment is the one you are working on, the next deployment. The deployment options for each environment can be changed to tune deployment parameters for that environment. The most recent deployment options for each environment will be saved with the persona in the Persona Hub. Once a persona has been locked it can be deployed to multiple runtime environments.

6. Adjust Communication Style (optional)

Select Communication Style. You will see a hexagonal communication style editor. Set the values within the allowed range for each dimension which is visible on each dimension’s indicator. The core personality of an agent constrains the range of values within which you may make adjustments. For example - a personality that is similar to The Detached Philosopher archetype will be neither high theatricality nor high warmth whereas one that is more like The Energetic Entertainer will be expected to have high theatricality and high verbosity. While there will usually be some latitude in setting each value, the personality you have defined will always impose some constraints.

Note: If you make significant changes to core personality before you lock the persona, you may want to return to Communication Style since the ranges may shift based on personality changes.

7. Specify Deployment Options

Select Deployment Settings to reveal a list of options that will affect the file output of the NT Persona Kit, the files that will be generated to allow you to install the persona in your choosen agent runtime environment.