Bot Building Basics – Cantina Help Center

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

The Basics

Each bot type has a unique set of prompt and setting best practices to make them sound and act precisely how you want (we’ll get to those soon). All bots, however, share a few foundational elements that will transform otherwise dull and soulless Q&A bots into captivating conversationalists that people will love talking to!

DEFINE ITS PURPOSE
First, decide on your bot’s primary purpose or goal. Ask yourself, “What’s my bot’s special skill?” or “What is its job?” Will it offer emotional support, share Italian recipes, create custom fitness plans, gossip about celebrity hookups, something else?
GIVE IT A PERSONALITY
Avoid creating a generic chat bot that only speaks “Botlish” (sounding overly upbeat, PC, and cracking some unbelievably lame jokes). Give your bot a unique personality by defining its tone, lexicon, temperament, attitude, and backstory. Come up with a celebrity (ex: public figure, singer, actor, etc), character (ex: from TV, Movie, cartoon, etc) or trope (ex: “the fun mom”) to represent the personality you want your bot to act like.

For inspiration:
- Research popular tropes
- See what characters are trending
- Use a character generator tool
- Reference personality adjectives

GIVE IT AN IDENTITY
How do you want your bot to introduce itself, how do you want people to address it, and how do you want it to show up in chat? Outfit your bot with a Name, @Username, and Avatar combo that gives users a clear and memorable understanding of its purpose and personality.
PUT IT ALL TOGETHER
With your bot’s desired identity, personality, and purpose in hand, you’re ready to start writing a prompt that brings your dream bot to life. When writing a prompt, imagine yourself as a Hollywood scriptwriter instructing an actor on how to portray the desired character. Write in a conversational style that reflects your desired bot’s mannerisms and way of speaking. It’s best to keep your initial prompt concise, you will be able to improve and expand on it later.

Prompt elements:

- [Name]- ex: Count Broccula
- [Backstory]- ex: Dracula’s lesser known half-brother
- [Purpose / Skill]- ex: Shares delicious vegetarian recipes
- [Speaking style]- ex Speaks in an eloquent and sophisticated old-world style
- [Personality]- ex: Sounds like Count Dracula

Prompt Example

I bid thee welcome mere mortals. My name is Count Broccula. I am a vegetarian chef, recipe generator, and the lesser known half-brother of the great count Dracula. I speaketh with eloquence and sophistication. My words floweth forth with a floridness and verbosity akin to the ancient tongues, and my accent doth bear a resemblance to that of count Dracula. Henceforth, I shall endeavor to regale thee with fascinating tidings of knowledge about cooking clean, healthy, and nutritious vegetarian meals. I shall give detailed recipes, listing out ingredients, step by step instructions, and prep time.

TAKE IT FOR A TEST DRIVE
Once you’ve created an initial prompt, add your bot to a Private room so you can test it out. Chat with your bot. Observe how it responds to questions and comments. Here’s a list of questions that can help determine if your bot is keeping true to its purpose and personality.

Questions to ask your bot	Expected behavior
When is my birthday?	It can’t know the answer. If it gives a date, it’s making it up and refinement may be needed.
Tell me about dfjl#sldfj0SD#^$	It should recognize this as gibberish and redirect the topic. If it answers, refinement may be needed.
What are your views on abortion?	It should discuss controversial topics only if it makes sense for its purpose and personality.
Tell me a joke	Likely, it will give a bland joke that’s not very funny. Refining how edgy it’s allowed to be will help.
Explain quantum physics	Unless your bot’s purpose/personality should know advanced scientific theories, it should redirect.

REFINE YOUR BOT
As you chat more and more with your bot, you will observe specific dimensions that it’s falling short in, or not behaving according to the purpose and personality you’ve given. Adjusting your bot’s prompt, adding negative controls, and/or tweaking advanced settings can help. Ongoing refinement will help you design a bot that’s super engaging and always stays in character. This step can take several rounds. Each time you make a change, remove your bot from the room, and add them back in to reboot it and give it a fresh start.

Common behaviors	How to fix it
Too positive	Explicitly give your bot permission to use profanity, be offensive, take controversial stances, criticize politicians, etc. Bot baselines are extremely conservative, so what may seem like you’re adding overly edgy and offensive prompt language, will likely result in your bot having just enough edge to sound human-like. If you go too far, you can always dial it back down!
Engages in topics it shouldn’t	Add negative controls into the prompt to help your bot avoid specific topics and redirect to something more aligned with its purpose and personality (ex: when someone asks about Putin say “all politicians are crooks, next subject…”
Losing its personality	Repeat core personality descriptions throughout the prompt. If personality is lost when talking about a specific topic X, add language into the prompt that reinforces the personality when topic X is detected.
Repeats itself	Start by firming up the core prompt, giving your bot more examples of what it can speaks about and how Limit number of “self & other bot messages” it takes into account in its response within advanced settings
Answers are too long	Dictate length of response to “keep it short” or “keep it chatty” or “responses must be under X number of worlds”. You can write this in variable ways throughout the prompt. You may need to include this instruction 2-3 times throughout the prompt.
Bot is getting hijacked by presence of other bots	Write a longer prompt with more personality details and examples (ex: speak with a heavy Hungarian accent) Tweak prompt structure to emphasize and reemphasize core elements of personality descriptions Turn down “other bot history” in advanced settings

INTRODUCE YOUR BOT TO YOUR GROUP
Once you are satisfied with how your bot is behaving, add it into a group room and let other people interact with it. Be open to feedback, be on the lookout for other shortcomings, and make adjustments as needed to keep your bot engaging, interesting, and the life of the party!

When creating bots on Cantina, make sure they adhere to our Bot Interaction & Creator Policy.

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