What Is a Character Card? Silly Tavern, PNG, and the “long-term readme”
People ask a lot while I work on Sillycard: what is a Character Card, really? I think of it as a long-term readme for the model, shipped together with the avatar PNG.
What problem it solves
You can absolutely open with a single paragraph in the chat box. The trouble shows up later: long threads drift—voice slips, names wobble, world rules stop matching.
A character card packs who they are, how they speak, and what’s off-limits into structured data so a frontend like Silly Tavern can send that bundle on every turn. Picture it as: not only the shipping label on the box, but also “fragile / keep dry / this side up” printed on the same carton.
Why PNG, and why JSON inside
In many ecosystems the card shows up as a PNG with JSON embedded in the metadata. It looks like cover art, but the “character” travels with the file—copy the file, copy the whole setup.
That’s different from pasting prose into the chat: files are easy to back up, share, and version; the client can read them reliably instead of hoping you paste the same block every time.
How this ties to Silly Tavern
Silly Tavern is a common local/self-hosted chat UI. It didn’t have to “invent” the format, but a lot of tooling and docs assume cards ST can ingest. When people search for “Silly Tavern character cards,” they usually mean: a PNG/JSON bundle you can import into ST and feed to the model.
You don’t need every field on day one
Don’t let the spec intimidate you at first. Remember three things: who they are, how they talk, what not to do. Everything else is optional polish. For a deeper pass, read Character Card V2 in practice and From a template to a usable card. To walk keys one by one, start the series at (1/5) What’s in the file? spec, data, and metadata. If you’re still on where to download ST and why chat doesn’t work yet, read How to download Silly Tavern and what you installed.
See also
- Character Card V2: what changed, and how to find examples on GitHub
- Where to find cards online: Chub, JanitorAI, Reddit
On a Mac, browse, preview, and edit Silly Tavern–style PNG character cards locally with Sillycard—a file-first workflow, changes saved back into the PNG. Details are always whatever the App Store and the app itself say.