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AI Assistant — Orion ​

Character Vault includes a built-in AI assistant called Orion that helps you brainstorm, write, and refine character content. Orion uses your configured AI provider plus the context you choose: pinned card sections and optional custom context.

TIP

Orion requires an AI provider to be configured. See AI Setup to get connected first.

Orion always uses the global model from Settings → AI Config. Per-prompt model mappings on the Prompts tab apply to the AI toolbar (and lorebook key generation for Custom). The Agent has its own mapping and is a separate chat that writes the card or book.

Opening the AI Panels ​

The workspace has two docked panels:

  • Context Panel (left) — Choose which character sections (and optional custom notes) the AI can see.
  • Ask AI Panel (right) — Chat with the AI assistant.

Both panels can be toggled from the workspace header. In the chat header, Agent switches this panel to the writing Agent. Switch it off to come back to Orion. The two threads stay separate.

Using the Context Panel ​

Before chatting with Orion, select what the AI should use as background:

  1. Open the AI Context panel on the left side of the workspace.
  2. Check the card sections you want the AI to see — for example, Description, Personality, and Scenario.
  3. Optionally add Custom context for free-text notes that are not part of the card.
  4. Selected sections and enabled custom context are included when you send a message (and when you use the AI toolbar).

This gives Orion the background it needs without sending your entire character card every time. Full panel details: AI Context Panel.

Chatting with Orion ​

  1. Open the Ask AI panel on the right.
  2. Type your question or request in the input field.
  3. Press Enter to send, or Shift+Enter to add a new line for multi-line messages.
  4. Orion responds — if streaming is enabled, you'll see the output appear in real-time.

Multi-line Input

The chat input supports multi-line text. Use Shift+Enter to insert line breaks when you want to format longer requests or provide structured input to Orion.

Orion uses a fixed system prompt that defines its persona: it knows about Character Vault's features, the V2/V3 character card spec, and is designed to be clear, beginner-friendly, and non-judgmental of all content types.

Cancelling a Request ​

You can abort an in-progress request at any time. The current generation stops immediately.

How Orion Handles Context ​

When the total input exceeds the context window, Orion prioritizes content in this order:

  1. System prompt (Orion persona) — always included
  2. Your current question — always included
  3. Context entries from the left panel (pinned sections, then custom context) — included until space runs out
  4. Conversation history — oldest messages are dropped first

See AI Setup → How Truncation Works for details on token estimation and context warnings.

Reasoning ​

Orion works with models that output reasoning/thinking content (DeepSeek R1, Qwen/QwQ, OpenAI o1/o3/o4-mini, Gemma 4, etc.). Reasoning uses the same Thinking fold as the Agent and the editor toolbar.

  • While a reply is streaming, Thinking starts expanded
  • After the reply, it is collapsed; expand it if you want to read the committed thinking

To enable and configure reasoning, see AI Setup → Advanced Options. Completed replies also show TTFT (time to first token) and T/S (tokens per second) on the message info tooltip.

Next Steps ​

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