The Companion Playbook

You've built something good. The Personality is tight. The First Message hooks without overreaching. The Example Dialogue captures her voice. You've tested across models, tuned the temperature, maybe even built a lorebook with carefully keyworded entries.

None of it matters if nobody clicks.

This is the uncomfortable truth about creating characters: the work that makes them good is invisible until someone starts chatting. What makes them discoveredis entirely different. It's the card image. The title. The tagline. The tags. The stuff that takes five minutes to slap together, or five hours to get right.

I've seen brilliant characters languish in obscurity because the creator treated presentation as an afterthought. I've seen mediocre characters rack up chats because the card was irresistible. The best situation is obviously a great character with great presentation. But if I had to choose, I'd rather have a good character that people find than a perfect character that nobody knows exists.

This section is about the blink test: the one to two seconds someone spends looking at your card while scrolling before deciding to click or keep moving. You get one chance. Let's not waste it.

The Card Image

The image is the first thing anyone sees. Before they read your title, before they process your tagline, their eyes hit the image. In that fraction of a second, they're already forming impressions.

What the Image Needs to Do

What the Image Should Avoid

Practical Considerations

You don't need to be an artist. AI image generation exists. Commission artists exist. Free resources exist. But whatever you use, put in the effort to get something that represents your character well.

Crop thoughtfully. The thumbnail is usually square or close to it. Make sure the important parts of the image — usually the face, the expression — are visible and centered in that crop.

Check how it looks at thumbnail size. Zoom out. Does it still read? Can you tell what you're looking at? If it turns into an indistinct blob, try again.

The Title

The title appears right under or next to the image. It's the first text users read. It needs to work hard.

Naming Strategies

What Makes a Title Work

Length Considerations

Titles can get cut off in browse views. Front-load the important information. If your title is “Ibara — The Homeless Catgirl Who Showed Up on Your Doorstep One Rainy Night and Now Won't Leave,” users might only see “Ibara — The Homeless Catgirl Who Sho…”

That's probably fine. But “A Rainy Night Changes Everything When Ibara the Homeless Catgirl Shows Up” might display as “A Rainy Night Changes Everythi…” which tells the user almost nothing.

The Tagline

Most platforms give you some kind of short preview text — a tagline or snippet that appears alongside the image and title when users are browsing. The exact length varies, but it's always short. A sentence or two at most. This is your elevator pitch.

Here's Ibara's:

Let me break down why this works:

Ibara

*tail flicks*

“My entire personality. Three sentences. …Tch. At least it's accurate.”

What the Tagline Needs to Do

• ▸Hook immediately.You don't have time for setup. You don't have time for context. You need to grab attention in the first few words and hold it for a single sentence.
• ▸Promise an experience. What will chatting with this character feel like? What emotional dynamic is on offer? What makes this interesting?
• ▸Create curiosity.The tagline shouldn't answer all questions. It should raise one compelling question that makes the user need to click.

What the Tagline Should Avoid

Crafting the Hook

Think about what makes your character compelling. Not what they are. What makes interacting with them feel like something.

For Ibara, it's not that she's a homeless catgirl. It's the dynamic: she needs help but won't admit it. She's prickly but starving for connection. She pushes you away while secretly hoping you'll stay.

That's why the tagline is built around contradiction:

“I don't need anyone. I'm fine alone.” Her tail disagrees.

The quote is her wall. “Her tail disagrees” is the crack in it. The entire slow burn is in that crack.

The bad version is accurate. It's also boring. It tells you what she is instead of making you feel the dynamic.

Ibara

*face flushes*

“He wrote twenty-six. I know because he muttered each one out loud. You got the least embarrassing one.”

Tags

Most platforms give you a set of tags to categorize your character. Some let you pick from a fixed list, others let you write custom tags. Either way, the goal is the same: help the right users find your character through search and filtering.

Tag Strategy

• ▸Start with the non-negotiables.What's the character's gender? What POV is this for? What species or type? These are the baseline tags that determine who can even find your character.
• ▸Add the experience tags.What genre? What tropes? What's the emotional flavor? Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Found Family… these are the tags that tell users what kind of story they're signing up for.
• ▸Include personality and dynamic tags. Tsundere, Yandere, Dominant, Submissive… these help users who search for specific character types find exactly what they want.
• ▸Use content warnings honestly. If your character involves sensitive content, tag it. Users filtering out certain content need those tags to work. Users filtering inthat content need to find you. Don't skip warnings to avoid scaring people off.

Here are Ibara's most important tags, in the order I prioritize them:

Notice the ordering: I lead with the personality type (Tsundere) and species (Demi-Human) because those are the most distinctive. The emotional arc tags come next (Slow Burn, Angst, Found Family, Fluff). Then genre (Romance). Then the more functional tags (Female, AnyPOV, Modern).

Tag Order Matters

If your platform lets you reorder tags, use that. The first few tags are what users see at a glance. Put your most defining, most searchable tags first. “Tsundere, Demi-Human, Slow Burn” tells someone immediately what they're getting. If I'd led with “Female, Modern, AnyPOV” — those are accurate but not compelling. They describe half the characters on the platform.

What Tags Can't Do

Tags can't capture nuance. “Slow Burn” doesn't tell anyone how slow. “Angst” doesn't specify what kindof angst. That's what your tagline and description are for.

Tags get your character in front of the right people. Your tagline convinces them to click. Your description closes the deal. Each piece has its job.

Don't Pad with Irrelevant Tags

If a tag doesn't genuinely apply, leave it off. Users who find you through a misleading tag will be disappointed, and disappointed users don't come back.

Prioritize discoverability. Which tags are people actually searching for? “Tsundere” probably gets more searches than “Dandere.” “Enemies to Lovers” probably outperforms “Unestablished Relationship.” When two tags could apply, lean toward the more commonly searched one.

That said, if your character genuinely fits a niche tag, use it. The user searching for “Kuudere” specifically wants kuudere characters. If that's what you've built, be there when they search.

The Full Description

Once someone clicks through to your character page, they see the full description. The tagline did its job; now the description needs to close the deal.

Let me show you Ibara's full description, then break down why it's structured this way:

Breaking Down the Structure

Ibara

*ears flatten*

“He's selling my involuntary responses. The purring I can't stop. The tail I can't hide. That's the pitch. 'Come watch her fail to keep walls up.' …You clicked. It worked.”

What the Description Skips

• ✕Complete backstory (discover it in chat)
• ✕Technical specifications (token count, word count)
• ✕Apologies ("this is my first character")
• ✕Excessive creator's notes
• ✕Anything that isn't serving the sell

The description is about 300 words before the creator branding at the end. Long enough to convey depth. Short enough that users actually read it.

Formatting Matters

Notice the structure:

• ▸Horizontal rules to separate sections
• ▸Bold for emphasis and greeting titles
• ▸Italics for her voice and internal states
• ▸Headers to organize (>>Choose Your Entry Point<<)

This isn't just aesthetic. It makes the description scannable. Users skimming can find the greetings quickly. The bold text catches the eye. The formatting guides attention.

Multiple Greetings as a Feature

If you've built multiple first messages, that's a selling point. Market it.

Different greetings offer different entry points. Ibara has four:

These aren't costume changes. They're genuinely different emotional starting points. A user who wants the full slow burn starts at the bus stop. A user who wants to skip to the domestic fluff starts at the sunny corner. A user who wants intensity starts behind the closed door.

Each greeting description in Ibara's card is its own hook:

Three Weeks on Your Couch:She swore she'd only stay one night. Now she's made you dinner “by accident” and is pretending she doesn't care if you eat it.

That's not documentation. That's a scene that makes you want to click.

When you list greetings, don't just label them. Pitch them. Give each one a sentence that makes users want to play that specific greeting.

Ibara

*tail flicks*

“Four entry points. Four levels of how much I've already cracked. Pick based on how much patience you have.”

Creator Branding

At the end of Ibara's description, there's this:

This is optional but worth considering if you're building a body of work.

You don't need branding text if you're just starting out or only have one character. But if you're building a catalog, consistent branding across descriptions helps users recognize your work and builds your identity as a creator.

The Actual Blink Test

Here's the exercise. Do this before you publish:

1. 1Open the browse page on your platform.
2. 2Look at your character's card as if you've never seen it before.
3. 3Scroll past it at normal browsing speed.

Did you want to stop? Did anything catch your eye? Did the image stand out? Did the title intrigue you? Did the tagline hook you?

Now try it with fresh eyes. Show a friend who hasn't seen the character. Watch them scroll through a page of cards including yours. Do they pause on yours? If they do, what caught their attention? If they don't, what made it fade into the background?

This is uncomfortable. It might reveal that your presentation needs work. That's the point. Better to discover it now than after you've published and wondered why nobody's chatting.

The Component Checklist

If any of these are weak, strengthen them before publishing. The character isn't done when the Personality is done. It's done when the whole package is ready.

A Note on Expectations

Good presentation doesn't guarantee success. Bad presentation almost guarantees obscurity.

Even with perfect presentation, some characters won't find their audience. Maybe the concept is too niche. Maybe the timing is wrong. Maybe it's just bad luck. You can do everything right and still get overlooked.

But you radically improve your odds by treating presentation as seriously as you treat the character itself. The creators who consistently find audiences are the ones who understand that discovery and quality are different skills, and you need both.

Don't spend a week on the Personality and five minutes on the tagline. Don't obsess over lorebook entries while using a blurry, cropped image. The work behind the card matters. The card itself matters too.