SillyTavern with Local LLMs: Complete Setup for AI Companions

SillyTavern with Local LLMs: Complete Setup for AI Companions

SillyTavern is the most feature-rich frontend for character-based AI conversations. What began as an AI roleplay tool has evolved into a powerful platform with persona management, memory systems, extensive prompt engineering tools, and connections to every major local inference backend. Here's how to set it up with local models.

Quick connect: SillyTavern connects to Ollama, KoboldCpp, llama.cpp server, and TabbyAPI (ExLlamaV2) out of the box. Any of the hardware setups at LLMHardware.io provides a solid backend for SillyTavern.

Installation

Install via git: git clone https://github.com/SillyTavern/SillyTavern && cd SillyTavern && npm install then node server.js. Access at localhost:8000. For persistent installation, use the included start.sh script. SillyTavern uses Node.js and runs on any platform. The companion app (STMP) enables mobile access to your SillyTavern instance via Tailscale or local network.

Character Cards and the TavernAI Format

Character cards are PNG images with embedded JSON metadata describing the character's personality, scenario, and example dialogue. Thousands of community-created cards are available on chub.ai and character.ai alternatives. Creating your own: the character description, scenario, and first message structure the AI's behavior more effectively than system prompts alone. SillyTavern's card creator UI makes this straightforward without JSON editing.

Model Selection for SillyTavern

For creative roleplay: models fine-tuned on creative writing data (Midnight Rose, Fimbulvetr, Noromaid) outperform generic instruction-tuned models. Mistral-based fine-tunes generally have better creative writing quality than Llama-based ones at the 7B level. For long-running stories, context length matters — use models with 32K+ context and enable context shifting. Avoid heavily RLHF-tuned "assistant" models for roleplay — they over-refuse and break immersion.

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