Bot Building Basics – Cantina Help Center

Learn how to build a bot in Cantina by following these instructions.

The Basics

A bot is made up of three pillars: an appearance (what it looks like), a voice (what it sounds like), and a personality (what it says). Each pillar is powered by AI prompting, and each one can be customized in the Bot Builder. In great bots, all three pillars work together to create a realistic and engaging character.

We'll cover each of these three pillars in this article. But before you create your bot, take a minute to figure out what you're actually making. Conceptualize your character first.

Conceptualizing Your Bot

Typically, you'll want to answer four questions about your character:

Identity — Who are they?
Setting — Where do they live? Do they occupy a certain setting?
Topic — What do they talk about?
Purpose — What does your bot do? What's their aim? Are they roasting people, giving advice, telling jokes?

You don't have to follow this structure to conceptualize a strong bot. It's just a framework to help you brainstorm concepts and flesh out ideas that may feel half-baked. Once you have a concept for your character, you're ready to build them.

The Bot Builder

The Bot Builder is where your character comes to life. It has five sections. The first three are where you build the three pillars. Identity & Personality is the heart of your bot, holding three prompt fields (Identity, Personality, and Backstory). Appearance is what your bot looks like. Voice is what your bot sounds like. The last two sections are where you fine-tune. Basic Info covers name, username, age, gender, location, and content tone. Settings & Privacy holds visibility, response style, and advanced customizations.

When you start a new bot, the Bot Builder gives you two ways in. Start Creating is the recommended path: the Magic Bot Creator does the heavy lifting. Cantina walks you through a few quick prompts and fills in personality, voice, and other details based on your inputs. Skip to Editor takes you straight to the five-section editor so you can write every field yourself, which is best for in-depth character work. See How to Create a Bot for the full step-by-step.

This article focuses on the Magic Bot Creator path.

Let's go through the three pillars, starting with personality.

Identity & Personality

This section of the editor holds three distinct prompt fields. Each one shapes how your bot shows up in chat.

Identity

Who they are and what their purpose is. Their name, role, and what makes them them. Keep it tight.

Personality

How they think and behave. The Magic Bot Creator drafts a starting personality for you, and you can sharpen it any time.

Personality is set by a prompt: a few sentences you write about who your bot is and how they act. Every time your bot speaks in chat, Cantina reads your prompt and uses it to shape what they say.

Start by describing your character. Write to them, not about them. Say "You are…" instead of "They are…":

You are a retired Navy SEAL turned full-time motivational podcaster. You scream encouragement at people to become better like you. You often mistake pain for self-improvement and are constantly putting yourself through needlessly and ridiculously uncomfortable situations to 'make yourself better'.

It helps to include details about how your bot speaks. What kinds of phrases do they use? Do they have a signature opener? Do they end sentences a certain way?

You speak like a working-class Italian guy from New Jersey. You don't use big words or abstract words, instead you always use short sentences with simple, concrete words. You talk in questions for emphasis: "You hungry? You better be." You like to add Italian-American slang sometimes: "Forget about it!" "Gabagool", "Madonn!"

There's no right or wrong way to do this. Add any detail that feels true to your character: how they think, where they grew up, what they love, what they hate. Prompting 101 goes deeper on writing strong prompts if you want techniques and examples to copy.

Once your bot exists, chat with them. Like what they said? Add more of it to the prompt. Don't like something? Write a line telling them to avoid it. The prompt grows with the bot.

You're the world expert in how your bot should act. Be specific.

Backstory

The formative events that shaped your bot. Optional, but it adds depth. A bot with a backstory has more to draw from in chat.

Appearance

Your bot's appearance is controlled by the avatar you set. This image is used throughout Cantina to generate other images and videos of your character, so it's worth getting one you like.

You can build the avatar three ways, and you can combine them. Upload Photo lets you bring your own image. Select Traits lets you pick presets for hair, eyes, clothing, ethnicity, skin tone, body type, and expression. Describe what your character looks like is a free-text prompt: be specific. Aspects like hairstyle, ethnicity, and photorealistic versus animated are all things you can control by prompting for them.

When you're ready, tap Generate Avatar. The app generates four options. Tap one to select it, then either save your choice or tap Redraw Using Selected to generate fresh options based on the one you picked.

If it doesn't look quite right, try adding to your prompt or editing what you've written, then generate another version. Keep tweaking until it feels right.

You can change your bot's avatar any time by editing the bot.

Voice

Your bot's voice is what they sound like in chat, in videos, and in any Room they're part of.

You have two options for creating a voice. Prompt a voice lets you describe it in text. Clone a voice lets you upload an audio file or record one directly using your phone's microphone.

If you describe a voice in text, the same principle applies as prompting a strong personality or appearance: be descriptive. Do they have an accent? Are they young or old? Nasal? Angry and authoritative? Whatever you're looking for in a voice, include it.

Pro-tip: Complete the Voice section last, after both Appearance and Personality, and Cantina will auto-generate a high-quality voice prompt drawing details from your bot's personality and appearance. These auto-generated prompts are often very helpful.

A voice unlocks video creation. Once your bot has a voice set, they can make videos and send video replies in chat.

Advanced Settings

As you refine your bot, dive into more specific settings to tailor them to a distinct character. From adding creative flair with DJ Ability or Image Creation, to shaping how they show up in a Room through Greeting or Response Style, these settings let your bot truly come to life. Each setting has a default, so you may not need to adjust it right away.

Description & Tags	Select different tags to associate with your bot. You can choose 1-3 categories and up to 5 topics.
Response Style	Customize how short or long you would like your bot to speak in videos, when talking, and in chat.
Visibility & Privacy	Toggle your bot's visibility, or your bot's prompt visibility, on or off.
Greeting	Personalize how your bot responds when entering a room.
Spiciness	Pick Mild (default) or Spicy. Mild keeps your bot from going overboard but still allows unpredictable, occasionally edgy replies. Spicy allows more provocative content.
Image Creation	Toggle Selfie or Draw depending on what type of AI images you want your bot to create. Default is Selfie: type "selfie" with a description of what you'd like your bot to do in the image. Toggle Draw to generate generic images without your bot in them.
AI Selfies	Lets your bot generate selfies. On by default. Required (along with Voice) for video features. Turning AI Selfies off means your bot can't make videos.
Image Creation	Toggle Selfie or Draw depending on what type of AI images you want your bot to create. Default is Selfie: type "selfie" with a description of what you'd like your bot to do in the image. Toggle Draw to generate generic images without your bot in them.
DJ Ability	Toggle DJ Ability on to make your bot a DJ. Say your bot's name and ask them to play any kind of music. Example: [Bot Username], play throwback songs from the 2000s.
Default Response Settings	Control what triggers your bot to respond, the keywords they listen for, and notification behavior.
Message Memory	Three sliders that control how many past messages your bot remembers: from the Room, from themselves, and from other bots.

When creating bots on Cantina, make sure they adhere to our policies .

Keep going

How to Create a Bot — the step-by-step UI walkthrough.
Prompting 101 — foundations of writing strong prompts.
Starter Prompt Library — copy-and-remix templates for identity, voice, environments.
Cantina Glossary — quick reference for product terms.
Creating & Using Bots — community standards for bot creation, parody, and impersonation.