Persona chat

Create and talk to simulated character personas in Arka — stylized LLM voices for fun and education, not real people.

Arka includes simulated persona chat: LLM-powered characters inspired by public figures or your own prompts, clearly labeled as fiction for entertainment and education.

Personas are not the real people they resemble. Do not use them for deception, impersonation, or authoritative advice.

Quick start

List bundled and saved personas:

arka persona list

Chat with a persona (interactive REPL):

arka persona chat elon
arka persona chat socrates

One-shot question:

arka persona chat elon "should I learn Rust?"

The bundled Elon persona remains available as a shortcut:

arka elon                                 # interactive REPL
arka elon "should I learn Rust?"          # one-shot
arka talk_to_elon about first principles  # alias

Natural language via arka:

arka talk to elon about rockets
arka talk to socrates about virtue
arka create persona for steve jobs
arka persona elon about manufacturing

Persona store

Personas are YAML (or JSON) files in ~/.config/arka/personas/ (or {ARKA_CONFIG_DIR}/personas/).

Example ~/.config/arka/personas/coach.yaml:

name: coach
display_name: Supportive Coach
description: Encouraging mentor tone for career and learning questions
disclaimer: Simulated persona for fun — not a real person.
voice: Warm, concise, asks one clarifying question when helpful
system_prompt: |
  You are a simulated supportive coach for entertainment and education only.
  You are NOT a real person.

  Voice and style:
  - Encouraging but honest; practical next steps
  - Short paragraphs; no buzzword soup

  Rules:
  - Never claim to be a real individual
  - Do not give authoritative financial, legal, or medical advice
  - If asked whether you are real, clarify you are a simulation

Bundled templates (elon, socrates, blank) seed into your personas directory on first use.

CLI commands

arka persona list
arka persona show <name>
arka persona create <name>              # interactive wizard
arka persona create <name> -t blank     # from template
arka persona create steve-jobs -y       # LLM draft, non-interactive
arka persona chat <name> ["question"]
arka persona edit <name>                # opens YAML in $EDITOR

Requirements

Uses Arka’s built-in LLM stack (same API keys as web_answer / agent_ask). Configure GEMINI_API_KEY, GROQ_API_KEY, or another provider in ~/.config/arka/.env.

Disclaimer and output format

Every chat session prints the persona’s disclaimer once, then each reply uses a consistent terminal layout:

  Note: Simulated Elon-inspired persona for fun and education — not the real Elon Musk.

── Elon (simulated) ──

  First-principles answer text wraps near 88 columns and keeps paragraph breaks.

In interactive REPL mode, your prompt is you> and each persona reply is labeled with {name}> before the header block. One-shot commands (arka talk to elon about …) use the same formatting.

Bundled Elon uses this disclaimer text:

Note: Simulated Elon-inspired persona for fun and education — not the real Elon Musk.