Getting Started

There are three things to do before you can have your first conversation:

1. Download and install the app for your platform.
2. Run the init wizard — pick a city, describe yourself, generate a cast of characters.
3. Add at least one API key — OpenRouter is the only required one.

The whole setup takes about five minutes. Most of that time is the wizard generating reference shots for your characters in the background.

Before you begin

You'll need:

• A computer running macOS 12+ or Windows 10/11 x64.
• An OpenRouter account (free to create) for LLM inference. If you'd rather run inference locally, install Ollama instead — Persona supports both and Ollama brings inference cost to $0.
• About $3–8/month of budget if you want photos and voice notes too. You can run on the free tier of most providers and pay nothing if you stick to text.

You do not need to create an account with Persona. There is no Persona account.

Privacy at a glance

Everything you'll see in the app — characters, conversations, memories, photos — is stored on your machine in an encrypted database. The encryption key lives in your OS keychain. API calls leave your computer to talk to providers like OpenRouter and fal.ai, but they don't pass through any server we own.

If you delete the app's data directory, it's all gone. There is no cloud backup. See Local-First & Privacy for the full picture.

Next

→ Download & Install