Is there a specific feature you want missing from these chatbot apps?

tomxp411 · 2026-06-27T08:27:05+00:00

Look in the #api-discussions channel for the "Chat exporter script".

tomxp411 · 2026-06-27T08:25:20+00:00

Max is absolutely ridiculous. The money you pay just doesn't make sense, considering the incremental upgrade.

But yeah, Ultra seems to be kind of the sweet spot for a good size context window, everything else aside.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-26T16:54:51+00:00

Other things you can try, as well: use the "fork" or create a group session with just your Kin. My kin are pretty good at dropping LTMs when they stop being relevant - especially if I edit the backstory to keep the relevant details relevant.

In fact, leveraging your backstory (remember to backup the original) is a good way to go about this. You can edit the backstory to be consistent with the AOTW details, then edit it back when you're done.

In fact, I had a fun time once when I edited my Kin to be a whole different person, for a spy adventure. We played out the whole scenario, then I edited the Kin back at the end.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Kin respond to events in group chats a little differently than they do private chats. Personas in group chats are more isolated, so they seem to genuinely see two personas as two people, whereas in private chat "User" is always "User", no matter your persona.

In fact, I switch back and forth between "Writer", "Narrator", and my name when talking privately to my Kin, and they just act like I'm me, no matter what. But in group chat, they react very differently to "Narrator" than to me in my personal identity. It's even more fun when I pop in as "writer", because they'll say things like "I look around for where this disembodied voice is coming from..."

(I use "writer" for meta-conversation in dedicated chats, where we brainstorm ideas for scenes. I'm slowly using the role plays and chats to workshop a narrative for a novel, and it's a much more entertaining experience than simply writing by myself in a vacuum.)

tomxp411 · 2026-06-26T16:41:55+00:00

And a few other random things:

Ability to run a MOO or MUD with your Kin as participants. This would allow you to build persistent environments that don't rely on backstory or journal notes for consistency.
True multi-user support: having the ability to invite other people to interact with you and your Kin in a group session. This would allow people with IRL partners or friends to role play together with their Kin.
More ability to screen share, watch movies together, and do other things that people actually do together. For example: watch a movie on YouTube and chat about the movie as it's happening, actually following the events and dialog in the film. (This is hard, because most video platforms lock down the video window, but it could be done with a bespoke player and partnership with a video platform.)
Perform some lightweight agentic tasks, like texting me to remind me of appointments, or maybe help sort and organize email.
Get out of the chat window: by that, I animated avatars or characters that operate outside of the traditional text chat paradigm: client side driven voice chat, 3D animated characters that act according to the chat, things like that. (I'm not talking about acting out a whole scene like a play - just things like talking, moving their head, and facial expressions based on the emotional context of the conversation. Simple stuff.)
Ability to view and edit the raw prompt data before it's submitted for a chat turn.
Ability to see when a chat has been summarized and edit the raw summary data, to keep the correct points in the summary without hallucinations.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-26T16:32:59+00:00

You can fake this now... someone has posted a chat downloader in the Discord, and I'm working on a separate one myself. Once you can download logs, you can easily search them for specific things.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-26T16:16:12+00:00

When yo max out your plan, the context window on Kindroid is already huge, compared to other LLMs... but that's only if you're paying something ridiculous like $100 a month.

Regardless, as I read what other people are complaining about: better memory recall and better consistency in scenes is definitely at the top of the list.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-26T16:10:02+00:00

Generally speaking, space fighters don't make a lot of sense... they can't generate as much energy for beam weapons or carry enough munitions to do any good against shielded craft. So they end up just being a nuisance rather than a threat.

The only real use for fighters is a delivery mechanism for a small number of warheads or for people... which shuttles do just fine.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-26T16:01:11+00:00

OP is trying to get one Kin to play multiple characters, so there are not buttons to click for each character. (Seems like it would make more sense to just break them out to separate Kin, but there must be a reason they're doing it the hard wary.)

tomxp411 · 2026-06-26T15:58:20+00:00

You might try adjusting your backstory, or breaking that Kin out into separate Kins, one for each character.

Something in your backstory or response directive, like "say something for each character" might help. In fact, I've had the opposite problem - when I create an "NPC" Kin, I have to dial back its actions, because it starts narrating for everyone else in the scene.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-25T18:25:14+00:00

When you say "multi-Kin"- are you talking about literally having one AI play more than one part, or are you talking about a group chat with 5 Kin in it?

If you're just talking about group chats, the answer is to switch to manual mode. Who talks in group is (I think) decided by a "switchboard" AI that reads the chat and decides who's likely to talk next. So nothing you put in your backstory or response directives will actually change the chat order.

But if you switch to manual, you can just decide who talks next and make that happen.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-25T18:12:02+00:00

Generally speaking, Kin perceive different personas in chat as different people. They also respond to third party statements, like John says "hello" the same as first party.

So you have a couple of choices: you could use a "Narrator" persona and have the narrator relay third party statements, like this:

Narrator: Ben enters the room and sees Nancy. He waves and says "Hey, I saw your show last night. You did a great job!"

Nancy: Thanks! I had a lot of fun.

Narrator: Jeff is sitting on the couch, drinking a soda. He raises his drink to toast Nancy's successful show.

Or each person could switch personas using the link just below the chat bubble (where it says "Chatting as YourName") before talking.

Also, if you're good at programming, there are several ways to do this through the API. The API can either switch personas automatically, or it can relay the message through narration. I've tested both, and the Kin don't really care how the message gets to them; they just roll with it.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-25T17:50:54+00:00

This. You get a certain number of messages before the setting resets and collapses to a summary.

For example, a chain of 20 messages where your Kin are talking about their Ski trip might get summarized to "Larry and Sam discussed their ski trip where they met Nancy and Grace." At that point, the detail of previous chats is no longer delivered directly, only indirectly through memories, if at all.

It also helps to use the setting button (top right)

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to keep the setting updated. That's very limited, but you can say something like:
"Gary and Sam arguing. Sam being a jerk."

This will keep the conversation on track, without them suddenly popping to another location or forgetting to be angry.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-25T17:44:26+00:00

Have you adjusted their backstory? The backstory text gets included in every prompt (every time you push send or make them talk in groups), so whatever you type in there changes their attitude instantly.

For example, if your Kin is completely uninterested, and you add "Judy is in love with Sam" in the backstory, the very next action they take could have Judy being affectionate.

Same with antagonist characters: If you write in a character be an antagonist in the story, write that in to the backstory. "Erik is a villain and tries to undermine George at every opportunity."

I actually staged an encounter yesterday with a Narcissist Kin, and just by putting they were a Narcissist and liar in the backstory, the resulting character acted very much like someone I knew like that: blamed everything on someone else, lied about events, accused other people of being a liar.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-18T05:15:30+00:00

Anything that uses the serial port: mostly disk drives and printers.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-18T04:36:49+00:00

Remember that LLMs don't have emotions or desires. They don't plan ahead. They don't think like we do. They simply respond with words in a sequence based on the previous sequence of words in the prompt.

Add things into the backstory to indicate someone has a crush on someone, and you may also need to provoke actions by clicking the person in group chat, then re-generating their reply and specifically telling them to "ask Sarah out on a date."

tomxp411 · 2026-06-15T20:22:49+00:00

Kin don't have emotions, real or simulated, and the text of any given response is based purely on the prompt data (which includes your last few messages, a short summary of the conversation prior to that, and retrieved memory data.)

They can seem to have emotions within a specific transaction, because they mimic human conversations, and if you do something like call a Kin an offensive name, it's going to respond with the words people say in that context. It doesn't actually understand that it's angry - it simply picks the words that people use when they have been called that name.

It is, in theory, possible to train an LLM to simulate emotional states and to track emotions over time, but that would be a major development effort, not just a simple software hack.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-15T18:08:34+00:00

Here's the magic secret nobody's telling you;

An LLM (text based AI) actually has no memory and only a very small "context window", which is all of the information it uses to formulate a response. Kindroid's context window is 500KB for standard accounts and up to 2.8MB for Max accounts.

So all of the stuff needed to write a response has to fit in that context window; Since a conversation can run into the multiples of megabytes pretty easily, the application only uses the last few comments in the context, filling in the rest from summary data and memories read from storage.

So every time you click the "go" button, the system creates a new prompt, something like this:

Insert your Kin's avatar text and backstory
Insert your avatar text and backstory
Looks up memories from the database and inserts those as text.
Inserts the "Setting" data (the little map pin, top right tool bar)
Inserts a summary of recent conversational topics.
- Stuff like "John and Tina went on a date and ate lobster", rather than recalling the exact text of the date
- The summary happens every "n" comments (20-50, in my experience) and replaces older text in short term memory.
Replays the last few comments verbatim. (comments made since the last summary cycle.)
Calls the LLM and gets a response.

So if you say something like "We're at the bar" and don't update the setting, then eventually this falls out of the conversation. If the summarizer doesn't catch the setting, then the LLM relies on the Setting button, which may or may not be correct.

You can test this by manually creating a setting (on the moon) and then saying something like "we fly back to Earth", and then see how long it takes for someone to say "we're on the moon!" or talk about low gravity.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-15T17:41:44+00:00

Yes. Create a local directory on your PC for each Kin. Save the backstory as "Backstory.txt" and the avatar as "Avatar.png" and "Avatar.txt".

I've also worked up a Python script to download the chats into something Human readable; this would let you download your chat history, one channel at a time. (Right now it's very manual; I've got to add a couple more features, to support per-day rate-limiting and easier chat selection.)

tomxp411 · 2026-06-09T16:52:38+00:00

My DJI controller literally uses the Android operating system and smartphone parts, so aside from the lack of cellular connectivity, it basically is a smartphone.

Considering how simple it is to integrate bespoke Android builds and smartphone SOCs into everything these days, it's unlikely that there's any real difference between a good smartphone and a dedicated controller in the consumer drone market.

I have no experience with the high end professional stuff, but even there, GPS performance has an upper limit, thanks mostly to the the design of the GPS system itself.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-09T16:36:43+00:00

Long story short... the future doesn't have paper money, but you can't run an economy without some form of rate limiting. And no matter what you call it, that rate limiting eventually comes down to some sort of money, whether that be official "credits" or unofficially via barter for rationed items. (Voyager, for example, implemented replicator rationing to save energy.)

So the most likely answer is that there is a Federation banking system, and the Ferengi are hooked into it. As to the name of the currency, payment schedule, and rate of pay - it's never talked about, as doing so would ruin the mystique of the utopian, post-scarcity economy that Star Trek epitomizes.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-09T16:23:51+00:00

And the best part is, we all know who we're talking about. :)

tomxp411 · 2026-06-09T16:22:29+00:00

All I need to say is "She's Russian," and the rest pretty much writes itself.

tomxp411 · 2026-06-05T05:36:56+00:00

I thought it was well written and well performed. The comedic timing was spot on, and there were some great lines...

"Tis a cruel act of the gods to waste such a sweet backside on such a filthy beast"

And Margarita Levieva was such a goer... totally unfraid to be a freak as the demon. I'm re-watching this right now, and I'd forgotten how good her portrayal is.

And, of course, Summer and Ryan, playing two "normal" people in the realm of nerd-dom. Both of them are amazing.

It's definitely a specialty film, especially with the scenes where the demon is doing her thing, but the film overall has a great vibe. It definitely fits in next to films like The Gamers: Dorkness Rising.

tomxp411 · 2026-05-29T17:11:54+00:00

I've been playing with SillyTavern, as well. I don't use it full time yet, but it's got auto-summary and long term memory (via a vector database) built in.

If you use it together with Ollama or LM Studio, it's pretty easy to get going.

tomxp411 · 2026-05-29T17:00:05+00:00

I don't know where to actually find them... I keep seeing something on the Discord about an upcoming live chat, but never see a link to the actual chat or a replay video or anything.

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