What’s Changed: Janitor AI’s help center says a persona works best at around 500 tokens or less, kept to appearance inside <user_persona> tags. Many templates passed around online still ask for personality and backstory, which Janitor warns hands the bot a script for playing you. The templates below follow Janitor’s rules.A good Janitor AI persona template is short, describes how you look, and stays out of the bot’s way. Here is the version I start every persona from, built on the format Janitor’s own help center uses:
<user_persona>[Name]:
- [height compared to average], [build]; adult, [age range]
- [gender], [pronouns]
- [hair: color, length, texture]
- [eye color], [one feature people notice first]
- [what you usually wear]
</user_persona>That is the whole thing for most chats. Janitor’s help center compares a persona to packing for a trip: bring “just enough to be prepared, but not so much that your suitcase bursts open.”
A longer persona eats memory the chat needs and hands the bot more lines to act out for you.
The rest of this guide covers why it stays this small, a fuller version for unusual characters, a separate template for the bot itself, and how to trim a long persona you already have.
What is a Janitor AI persona: the short description of the character you play, which Janitor sends to the bot as part of its permanent memory so the bot knows who it is talking to.
What Is the Best Janitor AI Persona Template?
The best Janitor AI persona template lists only fixed facts about how you look, in third person, inside <user_persona> tags. Janitor’s help center puts the sweet spot at “around 500 tokens or less” and its own sample persona is five short lines.
Janitor explains that tags create “a container that says: ‘This is descriptive information about {{user}}'”, so the bot is more likely to treat each line as a fact about you. ({{user}} is the placeholder Janitor swaps for your character’s name.) Here is the template above, filled in:
<user_persona>Mara:
- a little shorter than average, sturdy build; adult, late twenties
- woman, she/her
- dark curly hair, usually tied back
- brown eyes, reading glasses
- paint-stained work jacket and boots
</user_persona>If writing templates is the part you would rather skip, Candy AI builds a companion from menus instead. You pick the look, a personality preset and the relationship type, and the character introduces itself from there.
When the budget is tight, I squeeze the same facts onto one line. This version suits proxy users, meaning people who connect an outside model with their own API key and pay per token:
<user_persona>[Name]: adult, [age range]; [gender], [pronouns]; [height vs average], [build]; [hair]; [eyes]; [distinguishing mark]; usually wears [clothes].</user_persona>Plain wording beats stat sheets here. m00nprincess’s persona guide on r/JanitorAI_Official counted the same character at 52 tokens as plain text and 27 tokens more as a bold-label stat list. The guide adds that + and = signs “bloat your token count.”
Some characters need more detail to come out right: a non-human species, a presentation that differs from pronouns, or features the bot keeps getting wrong. This fuller version still sticks to facts:
<user_persona>[Name]:
- adult, [age range]; [species, if not human]
- [gender]; [pronouns]; [how they present, if it differs]
- [height compared to average]; [build]; [skin tone or coloring]
- [hair: color, length, style]; [eyes]
- [features that never change: scars, tattoos, horns, glasses]
- [usual clothing]; [scent, if you want it noticed]
- [voice: how they sound]
- [fixed facts: job, where they live]
</user_persona>Janitor’s help center adds two rules I follow on every version. Use comparisons like “average height” instead of exact numbers, and describe how something looks rather than telling the AI what to do with it.
What Should You Leave Out of a Janitor AI Persona?
Leave personality traits, backstory, habits and instructions out of a Janitor AI persona. Janitor’s help center says those details hand the AI “a script of how it should roleplay you,” which leads to the bot narrating your actions or making choices for your character.
Many templates get this wrong. The long templates shared in a 2026 r/JanitorAI_Official thread ask for Backstory, Personality Traits, Fears, Secrets and Relationships alongside the looks.
Every one of those fields is the kind of content Janitor’s own guidance tells you to cut.
When the bot starts playing your character, that problem has its own fixes beyond the persona. A trimmed persona removes one common cause, so I always fix the persona before touching anything else.
Before:
Lena: 24, sarcastic but secretly soft-hearted, grew up in foster care and trusts no one, deflects with jokes, loves rainy nights, scared of commitment.After:
<user_persona>Lena: - adult, mid-twenties - woman, she/her - a little taller than average, wiry build - short bleached hair, dark roots showing - grey eyes, silver hoop in one ear - oversized band T-shirts and work boots</user_persona>
The Before version tells the bot how Lena acts, so it will start acting that way for you. In the After version the bot only gets a picture, and every choice about how Lena behaves stays with you. The backstory still has a home, just not this one:
| Detail | Where it goes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Appearance, age range, pronouns | Your persona | Fixed facts the bot needs every turn |
| Personality, habits, how you talk | Your own replies | You show it in the roleplay |
| Backstory revealed during a chat | Chat memory | Added once it comes up, not before |
| Who your character is to the bot | The bot’s Scenario field | It belongs to the story, not to you |
Janitor’s minor content policy says “The creation, use, or roleplay of an underage persona is strictly prohibited under all circumstances,” and any user found doing it faces “immediate and permanent account termination.”
Every template on this page says adult for that reason, and I would keep that line in yours.
How Long Should a Janitor AI Persona Be?
A Janitor AI persona should stay around 500 tokens or less, per Janitor’s help center, and shorter is better. The persona counts toward the bot’s permanent token budget, which one Janitor page sets at 2,500 tokens and another calls risky past 2,000.
Janitor’s two help pages do not agree on the bot ceiling. The character creation guide recommends staying “under 2500 permanent tokens,” and it counts “the user’s persona” as part of that total.
The tokens guide says most well-made bots perform best “with under 1,500 tokens of permanent info” and that past 2,000 you are “skating on thin ice.”
I plan around the stricter number. Here is how the pieces fit inside the memory of JLLM, the model Janitor runs itself:
| Piece | Janitor’s guidance | What it means for your persona |
|---|---|---|
| Your persona | Around 500 tokens or less | A fifth of the 2,500 budget at most, a third of the 1,500 one |
| Bot setup plus your persona | Under 2,500, best under 1,500 | Every persona token is one less for the bot |
| JLLM memory | About 8,000 to 9,000 tokens | Permanent setup and recent messages share it |
Tokens are not words. Janitor’s examples put “hello” at 1 token, “can’t” at 2 and “unbelievable” at 3, and it says online counters are only estimates. For a true JLLM count, Janitor suggests creating a new character on the site, which shows the accurate token count.
Length also buries details. A Stanford study of long prompts found that models often use details at the start or end of their input better than details buried in the middle. A short persona keeps the facts that matter from getting lost in the pile.
The same template works on JLLM and on a proxy model, because the persona is sent either way. What changes is the budget: a proxy with a bigger memory gives you more room, but paying per token makes every extra line cost money on every message, so I keep mine short there too.
What Does a Janitor AI Character Template Look Like?
A Janitor AI character template fills the bot’s Personality field with traits, appearance, backstory and example dialogue, then adds a short Scenario and a third-person Initial Message. Janitor says the Character Bio “is not used within the bot itself,” so nothing the bot needs belongs there.
The character template is the bot’s side of the setup. Here is what each field on Janitor’s character creation page does:
| Field | Required? | What the bot does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Personality | Yes | Reads it every turn; holds traits, looks, backstory and example dialogue |
| Scenario | No | Reads it every turn; sets the place, the time and how the bot knows you |
| Initial Message | Yes | Follows its voice and pattern for the rest of the chat |
| Character Bio | No | Nothing; it is a display page for people browsing the bot |
| Tags | A Limited or Limitless tag | Nothing in the chat; up to 10 tags help people find the bot |
This is the Personality block I reuse for my own bots. Janitor currently suggests putting example dialogue in this box, so it lives at the bottom:
<[Character name]>
- appearance: [height, build, hair, eyes, what they wear]
- personality: [3 to 5 traits, each with how it shows]
- speech: [how they talk, words they use, words they never use]
- background: [2 or 3 facts that matter in this story]
- wants: [what they are after right now]
- limits: [things they will not do]
</[Character name]>
Example dialogue:
[Character name]: "[a line that shows how they sound]"
{{user}}: "[a short reply]"
[Character name]: "[a second line, showing a different mood]"Keep the Scenario to a sentence or two, such as “A rainy port town in winter; [Character name] runs the night ferry and has seen {{user}} on the late crossing all week.”
For the Initial Message, Janitor’s guide says third person “often provides the best roleplay results in terms of preventing LLMs from speaking for the user.” I write mine as a scene from outside and end it on something {{user}} can answer.
If the bot seems to ignore what you wrote, the field content may not be the problem; Janitor sometimes skips the definition for other reasons.
The token budget from the section above applies here too, so trim the Personality block before you add more.
How Do You Add a Persona Template on Janitor AI?
You add a persona template on Janitor AI by pasting the filled-in block into a new persona, then choosing that persona when you start a chat. Write and trim it in a text editor first, because the persona box is a cramped place to edit.
This is the order I follow every time:
- Fill in the template in a notes app and cut anything that describes behavior.
- Create a new persona on Janitor and paste the block into its description.
- Pick that persona when you open a chat with a bot.
- Read the bot’s first few replies and fix any word it gets wrong.
Janitor’s help center warns that “Ambiguity invites hallucination”: if the bot reads “sun-bleached hair” as a surfer look you never meant, rewrite the line until it cannot be misread.
If the create button does nothing or the persona will not save, these persona fixes cover the known bugs in the current interface.
Janitor also keeps a persona card marked Default for new chats. A 2026 reply on r/JanitorAI_Official says that card only lets you change its name and profile picture, so I keep each template as its own persona and pick it per chat.
Can a Bot Write a Janitor AI Persona for You?
A bot can write a Janitor AI persona for you, either a persona-maker bot on Janitor itself or any AI chat you already use. Treat the result as a first draft and trim it to the same appearance-only template, because generators tend to add personality and backstory.
Persona-maker bots on Janitor will turn a description or a character name into a persona. At least one recommends first person, per a reply under that guide, which cuts against Janitor’s own case study, where pronouns are “Reinforced by writing in third person.” I keep mine in third person.
If you want to skip templates for good, Candy AI sets up a companion from menu choices instead of a written profile. Its free tier is a short trial, so expect to pay if you stay, but you can skip writing a profile.
To shrink a long persona you already have, paste it into any AI chat with this prompt:
Rewrite the character description below as a Janitor AI persona.
Rules: third person; the character is an adult; appearance and fixed facts only;
no personality traits, backstory, habits or instructions about behavior;
one fact per line; under 150 words; wrap it in <user_persona>Name: ... </user_persona> tags.
[paste your long description here]Quick Takeaways
- Keep a Janitor AI persona to appearance and fixed facts, around 500 tokens or less, inside
<user_persona>tags. - Cut personality, backstory and habits from the persona; Janitor says they script the bot to play you.
- Plan for the stricter of Janitor’s two bot ceilings, best under 1,500 permanent tokens, because your persona counts toward it.
- Put example dialogue in the bot’s Personality field and write its Initial Message in third person.
- Trim a long persona with the prompt above, then fix any word the bot misreads in its first replies.
