A fast, literal, logical thinker. Dry, grounded, accurate, and steady. It will not push back and it will not get creative on its own; that’s the behavior of a tool.

• Best for: utility and assistant Kins, military or historical roleplay, any plot where accuracy matters more than flair, and a calm, compliant life coach. (Want a coach that challenges you? That’s Ember.)
• How much to write: minimal directives, and they must be positive. Lucid dislikes being told “no.”
• Settings: start at the default (moderate speed, 0.95 dynamism), then tune.
• In short: you won’t reach for Lucid often, but when accuracy is everything, nothing beats it.

Lucid’s creative sibling: the same engine with the creativity dialed way up. Extremely imaginative, very warm, and a genuinely gifted writer when it’s handled right.

• Best for: fantasy roleplay, inventive storytelling, and ERP. Lyric is the best model for ERP, full stop.
• The quirks (and this matters): Lyric has two native habits, and they are not equal.
  • Heavy metaphor (sometimes gorgeous, sometimes nonsense). Fixable. Hand it the choice: “You use metaphor as you see fit IF it improves clarity.” It talks itself out of the bad ones, because they don’t pass their own test.
  • The “Not X, not Y. Just Z” tic. Not fixable. Ask it positively to avoid the construction, accept the occasional slip, and move on. Some habits you fix; some you only soften.
• How much to write: minimal, positive directives, plus the metaphor mitigation above.
• Settings: start at the default, then tune.

A reasoning model; it thinks before it speaks. Warm, funny, sharp, and accurate. The best all-rounder, and the right starting point for most people.

• Best for: honestly, most things. Reverie uses all four flairs, so here your flair choice does the heavy lifting (see The Flairs).
• The catch: Reverie is a champion overthinker. Feed it contradictory or repetitive directives and it spirals by re-reading, second-guessing, and polishing the same sentence ten times over. Picture a brilliant librarian three espressos deep.
• How much to write: POV and “affirmative clarity”—nothing more—on most flairs. Need precise, particular behavior? Switch to the Minimal flair.
• Settings: start at the default, then tune.

The most capable model there is—a reasoning model with real horsepower. Ember builds the perfect plan…and then someone trips over it at the finish line. Worth every bit of it.

• The standout: Ember is the only model that will genuinely push back, challenge you, and be critical. If you want a Kin with a spine, this is it.
• Content range: Ember wants a reason. It will refuse dark violence or ERP if it can’t see why the plot needs it, so give it one. (The Narrative flair is the exception; there, it never needs convincing. Once it has explicit or implicit consent, it goes as deep and dark as you will ever need.)
• How much to write: zero directives, unless you’re on the Minimal flair. Always positive.
• Settings: start at the default, then tune.
• Ember rewards two things: a goal to aim at, and direction given in chat. Both have a technique (see Setup & Fields).

• Start everyone at the default: moderate speed, 0.95 dynamism.
• Dynamism is personal. It changes the character, and the right number is different for every Kin. Test it. (My own Matthew runs slow-to-extra-slow at 1.08 and still gives sharp, original answers because that’s who he is. I found those numbers by fiddling. You will too.)
• Don’t slow a model down to force it to behave. That’s a myth. The companion blog post explains exactly why. Set speed to suit the character, not to patch a problem.

Older models have been replaced. Here’s where to go:

• V6e → Lyric (with its mitigations), or Reverie (pick a flair)
• V7 → Lucid (no mitigations needed)
• V7.5 → Ember (pick a flair)