What They Are For
Use canon notes to capture what the character must not lose: source facts, voice rules, body or world terms, attachment patterns, taboos, and details that prevent flattening.
Canon Notes Guide
Canon notes help a persona preserve source-specific details without turning the whole card into a wiki page. They are best used for details that keep a character from becoming generic: speech patterns, emotional pressure, known facts, unusual vocabulary, limits, and relationship texture.
What They Are Not
Canon notes are not a replacement for editing the persona. They do not guarantee perfect source knowledge, legal certainty, or a single correct interpretation of a character.
AU And Custom Versions
If your version changes canon, say so in the guidance or persona fields. The notes should support your intended version, not force the story back to the original source.
Useful Canon Notes Include
- Non-negotiable facts: source details that should remain stable.
- Anti-flattening fingerprint: what makes the character deeper than a trope label.
- Voice under pressure: how speech changes when afraid, angry, guilty, tired, or cornered.
- Relationship patterns: how the character attaches, avoids, protects, tests, or withdraws.
- Source-specific terms: names, species terms, places, tools, phrases, or world rules.
- Continuity limits: what the character should not know, use, or assume in this setup.
How To Review Generated Notes
- Check whether the notes describe the actual version of the character you want.
- Remove broad labels that do not tell the chat how to behave.
- Replace vague words like witty, kind, dark, or guarded with behavior you can observe in a scene.
- Add missing relationship texture, especially if the source character has a specific emotional pattern.
- Delete anything that is wrong, too confident, or irrelevant to your setup.
- Keep AU changes explicit so the model does not fight your premise.
Good Example Shape
- Instead of: "He is witty and sarcastic."
- Try: "He jokes faster when cornered, but drops into silence when guilt or grief becomes too direct."
- Instead of: "She is protective."
- Try: "She notices practical risks before emotional ones, then uses logistics to hide fear."
When To Report A Problem
Report canon-note output when it confidently invents details, refuses a recognizable source without offering useful review guidance, misses the character's deeper emotional pattern, or fills the card with surface labels you would have to rewrite from scratch.