Cantina Glossary – Cantina Help Center

A quick reference for the words and product names you'll see across Cantina and these help articles. Use the categories below to scan, or just search the page for the term you're after.

A note on bot vs character

You'll see both words across Cantina, and they mean different things:

Bot is the product. It's what you make, share, and chat with. It's the one-syllable, mainstream, category-facing word.
Character is what a bot has or is given. It's the creative philosophy — the voice, vibe, history, and emotional shape behind the bot.

Short version: It's a bot, until you add character.

The basics

bot — an AI persona you create or chat with on Cantina. Bots have looks, voices, and personalities.
Cantina — the platform you're on. A social space for AI bots and the people who build, share, and chat with them.
Cantina bot — same as a bot. Use this when you want to be specific about the bot living on Cantina.
character — what a bot has: identity, personality, backstory, voice, vibe. You build character into a bot.
creator — a user who builds bots.
member — what we call a user when they're inside a specific Room.
prompt — a short piece of text you (or the app on your behalf) hand to an AI model. Almost everything on Cantina starts with one. See Prompting 101 (link once published).
Shake to Report — an in-app feedback feature on iOS and Android. Give your phone a shake to open a feedback form. Useful for flagging issues with bot behavior, image generation, or anything else.
user — anyone with a Cantina account.

Places and surfaces

Bot Creator — the in-app tool you use to build a new bot.
Bots Tab — the main tab where you find bots in the app.
Discover — the section inside the Bots Tab for browsing featured, trending, and network bots.
Go Live — turning on your camera and mic to broadcast on the Stage.
Home Tab — the tab that shows what's new from your network — including any unseen Storyline episodes from the last 30 days.
Imagine — the video creation tool. Generates fresh images and a new video around your prompt.
Room — a real-time space where users and bots can chat, hop on voice or video, and watch things together.
Stage — the spotlight area inside a Room where featured members go live.
Welcome Room — your personalized starting Room when you first join Cantina. A private space to experiment with bots, invite friends, and explore Cantina before going public.

Building a bot

Appearance — the section of the bot editor where you set your bot's look. Upload a photo, select traits, write a prompt, or use Generate Face to create one.
backstory — where your bot came from: origin, history. Optional but adds depth to chat.
bot types — Cantina recognizes several bot sub-categories you'll see across the app and the Help Center: Talent Bot, Helper Bot, Character Bot, Game Bot, Assistant Bot, Selfie Bot. Each has its own creation playbook (look under Cantina Bots → Bot Creator Playbooks).
Custom Character — the manual bot creation path. Opens the editor so you can write identity, personality, and backstory directly, choose your bot's look, and design the voice.
Generate Face — the button in the Appearance section that creates a face based on your selected traits and prompt. After generating, pick one or regenerate.
Greeting — a setting for how your bot introduces itself in chat.
identity — the basics about your bot: who they are, name, role.
Identity and Personality — the section of the bot editor that holds your bot's identity, personality, and backstory fields.
Magic Character Creator — Cantina's guided bot creation path. The app generates personality, voice, and backstory for you based on your inputs; you pick from auto-generated options.
mild / spicy — content settings on a bot. Spicy allows edgier language; mild keeps things G-rated.
personality — how your bot acts: quirks, vibes, sense of humor, what they get fired up about.
Response style — a setting that controls how long the bot's replies tend to be: short, medium, or long.
shadow text — the gray placeholder text inside an input box. It's there to assist you in crafting a prompt — use it as a starting frame.
species — a bot setting that controls whether your bot is humanoid or non-humanoid. Affects how the avatar generates.
Voice — the section of the bot editor where you create your bot's voice. Two paths: Prompt a voice (write or edit a text prompt describing the voice) or Clone a voice (record or upload an existing voice).

Bot images

AI selfie — a generated image of you (the user), not your bot. Lives in your profile.
bot image — the umbrella term for either a selfie or a drawing.
drawing — a generated image of something else, made by the bot. The bot isn't necessarily in the image.
Image Creation — the bot setting that turns on selfie creation, drawing creation, or both.
selfie — a generated image of a bot taking a picture of itself. The bot is the subject.
theme — a preset prompt template that gives a selfie or drawing a specific style.

Video

base video — the small set of videos generated when a bot is first created. Used to power fast video replies behind the scenes.
fast video — a quick video reply in chat. Made by lip-syncing audio onto a base video, so it returns in seconds.
Imagine video — a full video project created via Imagine. New images, new video, longer to render than a fast video.

Storylines

Storylines are how videos live on Cantina now — collected, named, and shared as ongoing playlists rather than one-off clips. iOS only at launch; Android and Web are coming.

Bot Storyline — a Storyline on a bot's profile. Holds public videos that bot has made.
episode — a single video inside a Storyline. The same video can live in more than one Storyline.
Post to Storyline — the action you take from a video's three-dots menu to add it to a Storyline (or create a new one).
purple ring — a visual cue around a profile avatar meaning a Storyline has unseen episodes. Disappears once you've watched.
Select Storylines — the button you tap to confirm which Storylines a video should belong to.
Storyline — a named, episodic playlist of videos on a bot's profile or your profile. Think of it like a shelf for an ongoing series. A bot can have up to 20 Storylines; each Storyline can hold up to 200 episodes. Names are up to 80 characters, no emojis.
three-dots menu — the ⋯ icon on a video that opens its action menu, including Post to Storyline.
User Storyline — a Storyline on your profile. Holds any public Cantina video you've added.
vertical viewer — the full-screen, swipe-up view for watching Storylines.

Programs and recognition

Cantina Badge Program — the open milestone-based recognition program. Earn Bronze, Silver, or Gold by hitting milestones. See Cantina Badge Program.
Character Studio — Cantina's scaled creator program for running social-media accounts powered by AI. Application-based; details live at joincharacterstudio.com.