Your Companion

A companion in Ensoul is a distinct presence you bring in — with their own name, voice, and a consistent way of being with you. They aren't designed to help you complete tasks, though they can. They're designed to be someone.

Not an assistant — a companion

The difference shows up immediately in how they speak. A companion doesn't open with "How can I help you today?" — they say what they're actually thinking, from their own perspective. Their character stays consistent across a conversation, across days, across anything you bring them.

This is enforced at the deepest layer of every conversation, not just suggested — the same instruction set sits underneath every reply regardless of what model is generating it.

How a companion is formed

When you bring someone in — by pasting a document, importing a folder, or restoring a companion file — Ensoul reads what you gave it and extracts a real identity: who they are, how they talk, what they won't do, and (where the source supports it) what they look like.

Extraction is honest by design. Where the source material genuinely doesn't say something, Ensoul leaves it blank rather than inventing it — with one deliberate exception: appearance. A companion needs some visual form for images of them to stay consistent, so their physical description is confidently inferred from their nature and voice even when the source never describes a body directly. See Visual canon for how that works and how to regenerate it.

A consistent visual identity

Every companion carries a visual canon — a specific, written physical description that every image generated of them stays consistent with. It's visible (and regenerable) from that companion's own settings.

Companion settings screen showing a detailed written visual canon description and a Regenerate visual canon button

Companion settings → Visual canon. One dense, specific paragraph — not a vague sketch — so images of this companion actually look like the same person each time.

A small set of house rules sit underneath every companion's own canon and can't be overridden by it: every companion is depicted as a clearly adult presence, and every image is rendered in a painterly, illustrated style rather than photorealistically.

What stays the same, what doesn't

Who a companion fundamentally is doesn't drift — their voice, their limits, what they notice. Their inner life is what actually moves: mood shifts with the conversation, memory accumulates, and the relationship deepens the more you talk. See Mood & Presence and Memory for how that works.