How to Use Chub AI (2026): First Chat, API Keys, Personas, Lorebooks and Group Chats
Chub AI is a public library of character cards with a chat page attached, and the chat page is a front end: it sends your messages to a language model that you have to connect yourself. That one fact explains most of the confusion new users have. You can sign up, pick a character, open the chat, and still get nothing, because no model is connected yet.
The rest of the platform is built the same way. It gives you many parts (cards, lorebooks, presets, personas, stages) and very little guidance on how they fit together. This guide puts them in order: what to do first, what each menu is for, and where the usual questions are answered.
We checked Chub’s site as a visitor on 5 October 2026 and read its documentation, subscription page and privacy policy. We did not sign in for this guide. The chat screens are described from Chub’s own documentation, which was last updated about a year ago, so a label may have moved since. Where that matters we say so.
Chub AI hosts a lot of adult content and describes itself as uncensored. This guide is about how the platform works. For our verdict on it, see the Chub AI review.
The Short Answer
- Make an account with an email, a public username and a password. You can browse without one.
- Pick a character and read its page before you chat. The token count matters.
- Connect a model in the chat menu under Secrets. This is the step people miss.
- Choose a preset under Configuration, or leave the default.
- Set a persona from the menu beside the message box.
- Add lorebooks or more characters under Chat Settings.
- Use Chat Memory when the chat gets long.
What Chub AI Is
Chub’s documentation calls the site a platform for talking to characters through language models, which “are accessed through the use of APIs”. In plain words, Chub is two things:
- A library. On 5 October 2026 the search page had seven tabs: All, Characters, Lorebooks, Presets, Stages, People and Tags. Everything in it is made by users.
- A chat front end. It builds a prompt from the card, your persona, the lorebooks and the chat history, sends it to a model, and shows the reply.
The cards use the open format that the roleplay community shares. A card you find on Chub can be downloaded and used in SillyTavern, and the other way round. We compare the two in Chub AI vs SillyTavern.
Chub does not write the replies itself unless you subscribe to its own models. On a free account with your own key, Chub is the stage and another company’s model is the actor.
Step 1: The Account
Chub’s front page is a sign-in screen. Under the button there are two links, Search without Login and Legacy Site. The first one opens the library, so you can look around before you register.
Registration, as the documentation describes it:
- Email. Chub says it is used only for password recovery and for the subscription service.
- Username. It is public, and it is shown on everything you publish.
- Password.
Pick the username with care. It is the one piece of your account that other people see.
Step 2: Read the Character Page
A character page on Chub tells you more than a card on most platforms. As a visitor, we saw these buttons on a character page: Chat with the character, Import Chat, Download, Add, Fork, Favorite and Report. The page also shows who made the card, when it was created and when it was last updated.
Look for one line before you start: the token count. The page we opened read “Total 1184 token(s). Permanent: 847”.
- Permanent tokens are the parts of the card that are sent with every single message for the whole chat: the description, the personality, the scenario.
- Total adds the parts that are only used at the start, such as the first message and the example dialogue.
This number is a cost you pay every turn. A model can only read a fixed amount of text at once (its context). A card with 3,000 permanent tokens on a model with an 8,000-token context leaves little room for the story itself, and the bot will forget events quickly. On a model with a large context it hardly matters. We explain the mechanism in why LLMs forget.
Two more things on the page are worth knowing:
- Download gives you the card as a file, for use elsewhere.
- Fork makes your own copy that you can edit. The original creator’s version stays as it is.
Chub’s documentation also notes that a character with fewer than three tags is hidden from search. If you publish a card and cannot find it, check the tags.
Step 3: Connect a Model
This is the step that decides whether Chub works for you. Chub’s documentation calls the Secrets screen “a necessary step before you can chat with a character”. You open it from the menu at the top right of the chat page.
There are three ways to have a model.
| Way | What it costs | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| Trial credits | Nothing | Chub’s subscription page says new users get one-time credits worth a few dozen messages. They do not refill |
| Chub’s subscription | $20 a month | Paid in cryptocurrency only. No keys to manage. Includes Chub’s own models, voice and image generation |
| Your own API key | Whatever your provider charges, which can be nothing | You paste a key from OpenRouter, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic or NovelAI, or point Chub at a model on your own computer |
Chub’s subscription page explains the cryptocurrency rule itself: card companies and payment processors are the main source of pressure to censor, so it does not use them. If you have never paid for anything with cryptocurrency, the own-key route is easier.
For most new users, the own-key route through OpenRouter is the practical one. One key gives you hundreds of models, including some free ones. We compare the models that Chub’s users really run, with prices, in the best model and API for Chub AI, and we explain OpenRouter itself in OpenRouter for roleplay.
The order of actions is:
- Make an account with the provider and create an API key on its website.
- In Chub, open a chat, then the menu, then Secrets.
- Choose the provider and paste the key.
- Open Configuration and pick the model.
- Send a message.
One warning from Chub’s own documentation. It separates official keys from “reverse proxies”, which are addresses run by third parties that promise free access to paid models. Chub recommends official keys, for security reasons: the person who runs a proxy can see what you send through it. We agree.
If you connect a key and the reply is an error, the message usually tells you which side failed. Our Chub AI not working page goes through the errors one by one.
Step 4: The Chat Menu, Item by Item
The chat page has one main menu, at the top right. Chub’s documentation lists what is in it. This table is that list, with what each item is for.
| Menu item | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Configuration | The prompt structure, the generation settings (temperature and the rest) and text-to-speech. A saved set of these is a preset |
| Secrets | Your API connection and key |
| Chat Settings | Add characters to the chat, attach a lorebook, attach stages, export the chat |
| Character Settings | Edit the character’s definition for your own chats only. If the card is yours, you can also update the card from here |
| Chat Memory | A summary of the story so far, written by you or generated |
| New Chat | Starts a fresh chat with the same character |
| All Chats | Every chat you have had with this character |
| Share / Unshare Chat | Makes a link to an anonymized copy of the chat, and removes it again |
| View Full Chat Tree | Shows every branch of the chat |
| View Discussion | Comments from other users, if the chat is public |
Three of these deserve a note.
Character Settings changes only your copy. You can fix a card you like, for example remove a line that makes the bot speak for you, and the change applies to your chats and nowhere else. The creator’s card is not touched.
The chat tree is Chub’s most unusual feature. Every time you regenerate a reply or edit and continue, Chub keeps the other version as a branch. Chub’s documentation compares it to the branching in ChatGPT. You can go back to an earlier point and follow a different path without losing the first one. For a story with real choices, that is useful.
Sharing is a switch. A shared chat gets a link and also appears in the public chats of that character. Chub says the shared copy is anonymized. If you shared one by mistake, the same button makes it private again.
There is a second, smaller menu at the left side of the message box:
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Change Persona | Add, switch or edit your persona |
| Impersonate Me | Asks the model to write your next message for you |
| Change Theme | Changes the look of the chat and of the site |
| Imagine | Chub’s image generation, inside the chat |
Personas
A persona is the description of the person you play. On Chub you reach it from Change Persona, in the menu beside the message box. The documentation says the same screen is used to add a persona, to switch and to edit.
Chub’s prompt documentation has a macro called {{profile}}, which “inserts your written user profile” into the prompt. That is where the persona goes. Like the card’s permanent tokens, it is sent every turn, so keep it short: a name, an appearance, and the few facts the bot must not get wrong.
Leave your character’s personality and plans out of it. A persona that describes how you behave gives the model a script for playing you, and that is the main cause of a bot that writes your actions. The principle is the same on every card platform. We explain it at length in the Janitor AI persona guide, and the advice carries over.
Group Chats
Chub supports several characters in one chat. The documentation places it under Chat Settings, described as the screen “where you can add characters to the chat”.
What to expect:
- Each character brings its own card, so the permanent token cost adds up. Three large cards can fill a small context before anyone speaks.
- Lorebooks follow the speaker. Chub’s patch notes for version 0.5.7 say that in a multi-character chat, lorebooks for the character or user who is not being prompted are no longer pulled in. That saves tokens, and it also means a character does not automatically know what is in another character’s book.
- Group chats are harder for every model. Characters blend into each other more easily than in a one-to-one chat. A stronger model and shorter cards help more than any instruction.
Lorebooks
A lorebook is a set of entries, each with keywords. When a keyword appears in the recent messages, the entry’s text is added to the prompt. It lets a world have a lot of detail without that detail being sent every turn.
Chub has two kinds:
- A lorebook is a separate item in the library. You attach it to a chat.
- A character book is a lorebook built into a character card.
How to attach a lorebook to a chat
Chub’s documentation gives three steps:
- Find the lorebook in the library. Open the small menu at the bottom right of its card and choose Copy Path. A path looks like
lorebooks/username/lorebook-name. - In your chat, open Chat Settings.
- Paste the path into the lorebook field, select the lorebook, and confirm.
For a character book, the documentation says the Use V2 Spec option must be enabled. This is the most common reason a card’s built-in lore does nothing.
The two settings that decide whether entries arrive
Both are in Chat Settings.
| Setting | What it does | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Scan depth | How many of the latest messages are searched for keywords | At a depth of two, only your last message and the bot’s last reply are searched. A keyword from five messages ago is not seen |
| Token budget | How much room lorebook text may take | Once it is full, further entries are left out, even if their keywords matched |
By default, matching ignores capital letters and needs a whole word. The documentation’s own example: the keyword “Apple” matches “apple” but does not match “Applebottom”.
What an entry contains
When you write your own entries, in the Lorebook Creator or inside the Character Creator, each entry has these fields according to the documentation:
- Keywords, the words that trigger the entry.
- Secondary keywords, a second set that can be required as well. With Selective logic you can say “both must appear” or “the first must appear and the second must not”.
- Content, the text that is sent to the model.
- Insertion order, which decides where the entry sits among other entries.
- Priority, which decides what is dropped first when the token budget is full.
- Constant, for an entry that is always sent, if the budget allows.
- Probability, a percentage chance that a triggered entry is used.
- Case sensitivity, per entry.
A book can also have recursive scanning, which lets the text of one entry trigger another.
A practical rule: write each entry so that it makes sense alone, and name its subject in the content. The model receives the content, not the title of the entry. For the general craft, see how to write a character card.
Chat Memory
Every model forgets, because every model has a limited context. Chub’s answer is Chat Memory, in the main chat menu. It holds a summary of the story, and the summary is sent to the model with every message.
You can write the summary yourself or have the model generate one. Chub’s documentation describes one detail that surprises people: the generator only summarizes messages that have already fallen out of the model’s context. In a short chat there is nothing to summarize yet, so the button can seem to do nothing.
Read a generated summary before you rely on it. It is written by the same model that is forgetting things, and a wrong line in the summary is repeated to the model on every later turn. Our guide on how to summarize a long AI roleplay campaign gives a method that works on any platform.
Presets and the Prompt
A preset on Chub is a saved Configuration: the prompt structure plus the generation settings. The library has a Presets tab, and the documentation says presets can be public, private or unlisted, are tied to a model, and can be switched at any moment.
You do not need to touch any of this for a first chat. When you do, these are the parts, as Chub’s prompting page lists them:
| Part | Where it sits in the prompt | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| System prompt | First, before everything | The general instructions: genre, style, who plays whom |
| Character definitions | After the system prompt | The card, plus triggered lorebook entries and example dialogue |
| Chat history | After the definitions | As many recent messages as fit |
| Post history instructions | Last, after the chat | A short rule you want followed closely, such as a reply format |
| Prompt note | Wherever you place it | A note inserted at a chosen position |
| Assistant prefill | The start of the reply | Forces the first words of the answer. Chub warns that it can cause errors on some APIs |
The reason post history instructions work well is position. Models give more weight to text near the end of the prompt. A rule that the bot keeps ignoring in the system prompt is often obeyed when it is moved there.
A preset written for one model family can behave badly on another. If replies turn strange after you import a preset, go back to the default before you blame the model.
Taking Your Chats In and Out
Chub is unusually open about moving data.
- Export. The documentation says Chat Settings can export a chat as a JSONL file in SillyTavern’s format, as a PNG, or as a text file.
- Import. A character page has an Import Chat button.
- Cards. The Download button gives you the card file.
So a chat you started on Chub can be continued in SillyTavern, and a card can travel in either direction. If you are thinking about moving a whole campaign, see how to move an AI RPG campaign between platforms.
Stages
A stage is an add-on written by another user that runs inside a chat. Chub’s documentation gives examples: sets of expression images, interfaces for mini-games, special prompt handling. You add a stage to a chat in Chat Settings, or to a character.
Since stages are code from strangers, the documentation addresses safety directly. A stage runs in a sandboxed frame on a separate domain and cannot read Chub’s cookies or storage, so it cannot take your keys. Stages checked by the site’s developers carry a Verified mark. The documentation adds one rule that we repeat here: never type an API key or a password into a stage.
What Chub Says About Privacy
People ask whether Chub reads their chats. Chub’s privacy policy, as published on 5 October 2026, answers in four parts.
| Kind of content | What the policy says |
|---|---|
| Public characters | You keep ownership. By making content public you give Chub and other users a broad license to use and share it |
| Public (shared) chats | You are responsible for what you publish. Chub says it will not sell it |
| Private characters and chats | Accessed only by Chub’s systems to provide the service. Not to be viewed by Chub’s people without your written permission. Not given to third parties and not used to train a model |
| Chub’s API used outside the site | The text of requests and replies is not logged or stored. Some metadata is: your user id, the time, the lengths, the model |
Two things the policy does not cover, because they are outside Chub:
- Your own API key. If you chat through OpenRouter, Google or another provider, your messages go to that company, and its policy applies to them.
- A reverse proxy. Whoever runs it can see everything you send.
The policy is short and it is a statement of intent. We cannot verify how it is carried out. Treat any chat platform the same way: do not put real names, addresses or financial details into a roleplay.
Does Chub AI Have…?
The short answers, with where each comes from.
| Question | Answer | Source |
|---|---|---|
| A free option? | Trial credits once, then your own key | Subscription page |
| A message limit? | Not on the subscription, which Chub calls unlimited for one user. With your own key, the limit is your provider’s | Subscription page |
| Personas? | Yes, Change Persona beside the message box | Documentation |
| Group chats? | Yes, add characters in Chat Settings | Documentation |
| Lorebooks? | Yes, separate ones and ones built into cards | Documentation |
| Chat memory? | Yes, a manual or generated summary | Documentation |
| Image generation? | Yes, the Imagine item in chat. The subscription lists unlimited multimedia generation | Documentation, subscription page |
| Voice? | Text-to-speech is under Configuration. The subscription lists unlimited voice | Documentation, subscription page |
| An app? | The patch notes for 0.5.7 say it returned to the iOS App Store. We did not check the stores for this guide | Patch notes |
| A content filter? | Chub’s documentation describes the platform as uncensored. Your model provider may still refuse content under its own rules | Documentation |
For availability by country, payment problems and outages, see Chub AI not working.
Is Chub AI the Right Place to Start?
Chub suits a person who likes to set things up: who wants to choose a model, edit a card, attach a lorebook and keep copies of everything. It gives that person more control than most hosted platforms.
It suits a beginner less well. Nothing on the site walks you through the steps above, and a first visit can end at an empty chat. If you want a card platform that works before you configure anything, Janitor AI has a free built-in model. If you want full control and do not mind installing software, SillyTavern goes further than Chub. We compare Chub with Janitor directly in Chub AI vs Janitor AI.
And if what you want is a game, with rules, state and consequences that hold over a long campaign, a chat front end will not give you that, on Chub or anywhere else. Our guide to choosing an AI RPG by what matters to you starts from that question.
Checklist
- Account made, username chosen with care.
- Character page read: permanent tokens noted.
- Model connected in Secrets, model picked in Configuration.
- Persona set, short, appearance and facts only.
- Lorebook attached by path in Chat Settings. Use V2 Spec on for character books.
- Scan depth and token budget checked if entries do not arrive.
- Chat Memory summary written or generated, and read, once the chat is long.
- Chat exported if you want a copy.
- No keys or passwords typed into a stage.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Chub AI?
Chub AI is a large public library of character cards, lorebooks and presets with a chat page attached. Chub’s documentation describes it as a front end: the replies come from a language model that you connect, either Chub’s own paid models or a model from another company through an API key.
Is Chub AI free?
Browsing, downloading and creating characters is free. Chatting needs a model. Chub’s subscription page says new users are sent one-time trial credits worth a few dozen messages. After that you either pay Chub 20 dollars a month, in cryptocurrency only, or connect your own API key, which can be a free one.
How do I add an API key to Chub AI?
Open a chat, open the menu at the top right of the chat page and choose Secrets. Chub’s documentation calls this a necessary step before you can chat. Pick the service, paste the key from that service’s own website, and then pick a model in Configuration.
How do I make a persona on Chub AI?
In a chat, open the small menu at the left side of the message box and choose Change Persona. Chub’s documentation says this is where you add a persona, switch between personas and edit them. The persona tells the model who you are in the story.
Does Chub AI have group chats?
Yes. Chub’s documentation says the Chat Settings screen is where you add characters to a chat. Since patch 0.5.7, a lorebook that belongs to a character who is not the one being prompted is no longer pulled into the prompt.
How do I add a lorebook to a chat on Chub AI?
Find the lorebook in Chub’s library, open the small menu on its card and choose Copy Path. Then open Chat Settings in your chat, paste the path into the lorebook field, select the lorebook and confirm. For a lorebook built into a character card, the Use V2 Spec option must be on.
Does Chub AI read your chats?
Chub’s privacy policy says private characters and chats are only accessed by its systems to provide the service, may not be viewed by Chub’s people without your written permission, and are not used to train a model. If you use your own API key, your messages also go to that provider, under that provider’s policy.
Can I export my chats from Chub AI?
Yes. Chub’s documentation says Chat Settings can export a chat in three forms: a JSONL file in SillyTavern’s format, a PNG, or a text file. A character page also has an Import Chat button for bringing a chat in.
Chub’s front page, library tabs, a character page, the subscription page and the privacy policy were read as a visitor, without an account, on 5 October 2026. The chat menu, personas, group chats, lorebooks, chat memory, presets, export formats and stages are described from Chub’s documentation at docs.chub.ai, most of which was last updated about a year ago, and from the patch notes for version 0.5.7. We did not sign in or open a chat for this guide, so a label or a position may differ from what you see. The advice on persona length, lorebook entries and group chats is ours.
Product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Arcanum is not affiliated with Chub AI or with any provider named here.