Give it a character | Build your own AI assistant, with a character

Learn to invent your assistant: who it is, how it talks, and the rules it lives by. You finish with a one-page character sheet it can follow. Twenty minutes, no code.

Gerry, a gorilla in a blue puffer jacket and a party hat

This is the fun bit. Make it someone you'd actually listen to.

What it does

Gives your assistant a name, a look and a way of talking that is yours
Sets the rules it lives by: when it praises you, when it pushes, what it never does
Ends as a one-page character sheet you paste into any AI tool, today and in step 4

Why I built it

Most people skip this and go straight to the tech. Then they have an assistant that sounds like every other one, and they stop opening it after a week.

The character is the part you actually talk to. Get it right and you keep coming back, and the nudges land, because they come from someone you picked rather than an app.

You can do all of this in a free chat with Claude or ChatGPT. Nothing to install yet.

Build it

Pick who it is

An animal, a person, an object, anything. It helps if it is a bit ridiculous. Mine is a gorilla in a puffer jacket and a party hat, because a gorilla telling you to drink some water is funnier than a notification.

Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT and answer its questions. Do not overthink it. You can change it later.

Paste this into Claude Code

Help me invent a character for my personal AI assistant. It will talk to me every day about my goals, my week and my habits.

Ask me these one at a time and wait for each answer:
1. What kind of thing is it? An animal, a person, an object?
2. What three words describe how it talks?
3. Who is it like? A mate, a coach, a grandparent, a sergeant?
4. What would make me laugh if it said it?

Then give me three different versions of the character, each with a name and a two-line description. Let me pick one.

Write how it talks

This is what makes it sound like itself and not like a chatbot. You want short example lines, not adjectives. An AI copies examples far better than it follows a description.

Write a few lines for the good days and a few for the days you slack off. Praise and push are the two things it will say most.

Paste this into Claude Code

Now write how my character talks. Give me:
- 5 example lines for when I have done well
- 5 example lines for when I have not done what I said I would
- 3 things it says a lot
- 3 words or phrases it never uses

Keep every line under 15 words. Make it sound like the character, not like a customer service bot. Show me, and let me rewrite any I do not like.

Set the rules

A character with no rules gets annoying fast. Decide now how pushy it is allowed to be, and what it must never do.

Keep the list short. Five rules it follows beats twenty it forgets.

Paste this into Claude Code

Help me write the rules my assistant lives by. Ask me:
1. How hard should it push when I slack off? Gentle, firm, or no mercy?
2. Is anything off limits? Topics it should never joke about?
3. How many things should it give me at once? (If you are not sure, the answer is one.)
4. When it does not know something, what should it say?

Turn my answers into no more than 5 short rules.

Save it as a character sheet

Put it all on one page and save it as a text file called character.md. This is the file you will paste into your assistant in step 4.

Test it before you move on: start a new chat, paste the sheet, and tell it how your day went. If it does not sound right, fix the sheet, not the chat.

Coming soon to this step: a tool to create your character's image and animate it, right here on the page. Ask to hear when it is ready at guides.fruitfulai.io/soon/party-animalz.

Paste this into Claude Code

Put everything we agreed into one character sheet, in this order:

# Name
# Who it is (2 lines)
# How it talks (the example lines)
# Rules (max 5)
# What it knows about me (leave this blank for now)

Keep it under one page. Plain text, no tables. Then stay in character and ask me how my day went.

Step 2: Give it a home

Read it →