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Understanding Presets

This guide explains how presets work conceptually, so you can create and customize them with confidence.

The Prompt Assembly Pipeline

When you send a message, Lumiverse doesn't just forward your chat history to the AI. It assembles a structured prompt from multiple sources:

┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  Preset Blocks (in order)   │
│  ├── System Prompt          │
│  ├── Character Description  │
│  ├── Personality            │
│  ├── Scenario               │
│  ├── Persona                │
│  ├── World Info (before)    │
│  ├── Chat History           │
│  ├── World Info (after)     │
│  ├── Author's Note          │
│  └── Custom Blocks...       │
├─────────────────────────────┤
│  Sampler Parameters         │
│  (temperature, top_p, etc.) │
└─────────────────────────────┘

Each block in the preset can be enabled/disabled, reordered, and customized. This gives you granular control over every part of the prompt.

Preset Components

Prompt Order (Blocks)

The prompt_order is a list of blocks that defines what goes into the prompt and in what order. Each block has:

  • Name — What this block is called
  • Content — The text or macro that gets inserted
  • Role — Whether it's a system, user, or assistant message
  • Enabled — Whether this block is active
  • Position — Where it appears relative to the chat history

Prompts (Named Text Blocks)

The prompts map stores named text content used by the preset — things like the main system prompt, continuation nudges, and impersonation instructions.

Parameters

Sampler settings that control how the AI generates (creativity, randomness, length).

Metadata

Additional configuration like completion settings, sampler overrides, and behavioral flags.

How Blocks Become a Prompt

During assembly, Lumiverse walks through the block list in order:

  1. Marker blocks (like char_description, scenario, persona) are replaced with the corresponding character/persona data
  2. Content blocks have their text run through the macro resolver (replacing {{char}}, {{user}}, etc.)
  3. World Info blocks are filled with activated lorebook entries
  4. Chat history inserts all the conversation messages
  5. Special blocks (Author's Note, continuation nudges) are injected at configured depths

The result is a complete, ordered list of messages sent to the AI.

Macros in Presets

Blocks can contain macros — template variables that get replaced with dynamic content. For example:

You are {{char}}, a {{personality}} character in the following scenario:
{{scenario}}

The user's name is {{user}}.
{{persona}}

This becomes:

You are Aria, a curious and adventurous character in the following scenario:
A bustling market square in a medieval fantasy city...

The user's name is Alex.
Alex is a 28-year-old freelance photographer...

See the Macros guide for a complete reference.

Fallback Behavior

If no preset is linked to your connection, or the preset has no blocks, Lumiverse falls back to a simple mode: it maps your chat messages directly to {role, content} pairs and sends them as-is. This works, but you lose all the advanced features (world info, macros, author's note, etc.).

Linking Presets to Connections

Each connection can optionally link to a preset. When you generate using that connection, its linked preset is used for assembly. You can also switch presets independently of connections.