How to use Chub character cards without installing anything

What you get when you download from Chub

Chub is a catalogue of character cards. Each character page has a Download control, and what it hands you is an ordinary card PNG: the portrait you see on the page, with the character's JSON tucked into a text chunk inside the file. Many pages also offer the card as JSON, which is the same content without the picture. Either file works here, and neither needs converting.

Because the download is a normal file, nothing about using it requires a local install. The old route was download the PNG, install a client, point it at a model provider, paste an API key, then import. The file has not changed; only the thing reading it has. You can hand the same PNG to a browser-based chat and skip the middle three steps entirely.

Getting the file and importing it

Save the card somewhere you can find it again, then import it. The whole path is five short steps, and the only account requirement is a free one, because the card is stored in your library rather than held in the tab.

On import the card is parsed in front of you and the fields it found are listed before anything is saved. That preview matters more with downloaded cards than with your own, because you did not write them: it is where you notice that a card has fourteen lorebook entries, or that its description is two thousand tokens of adjectives.

• Open the character's page on Chub and use Download to save the PNG (or the JSON, if offered)
• Create a free LoreChat account and sign in
• Open /characters/import and drag the file in, or pick it with the file picker
• Review the parsed fields and save the card to your library
• Start a chat, or open the editor first if you want to change something

Why the lorebook and alternate greetings matter

The better cards on Chub carry a character_book, and it is usually where the setting actually lives. Rather than pushing every place, faction and rival into the description — which would be sent with every single request — a lorebook holds them as entries with keys, and an entry is injected only when one of its keys shows up in the recent conversation. Mention the harbour and the harbour entry arrives; talk about anything else and it stays out of the way. That is what lets a card be both detailed and affordable.

Alternate greetings are the other thing worth checking. A card with five greetings is really five opening scenes for one character: the same person met in a tavern, a prison, or a wedding. When a chat starts you choose between them, so a card like that survives many more playthroughs than one with a single fixed opening. Both features import intact — up to twenty greetings, and every lorebook entry with its keys, secondary keys, constant and selective flags, scan depth and token budget.

Adjusting the card after import

The imported card is yours to edit, and downloaded cards usually need a little work. Open it in the editor and read the description as if you were the model: cut the parts that repeat, keep the parts that constrain behaviour. If the first message is three paragraphs of scene-setting that never hands you a turn, rewrite the last line so it does. If the lorebook has entries whose keys are words like "the" or the character's own name, they will fire constantly and eat the token budget; tighten the keys or drop the entries.

Two settings are worth a thought before you start. The story director drafts a premise, four to eight beats with rising tension, and a twist held back until its moment, then keeps a running summary as the chat grows; it works from the scenario, so a card with a vague scenario gets a vague plan and you may prefer to turn the director off for that one. Personas decide who "you" are in the scene and are set per chat, which is worth doing when a card assumes a particular sort of {{user}}.

Publishing a remix, and crediting the original

Cards are private by default. If you rework one into something you want to share, the editor lets you publish it as public, which lists it on Explore, or unlisted, which means only people with the link can open it. Unlisted is the right choice for a card you want to send to two friends.

If the card started as someone else's, credit them. Put a line in the creator notes — "Adapted from <card> by <author> on Chub" — and leave the original creator field alone unless you rewrote the character wholesale. It costs you one sentence, it tells the next person where the good parts came from, and it is the difference between a remix and a reupload. Check the original page too: some authors ask that their cards not be republished at all, and that request is easy to honour by keeping your version unlisted.

The rules, briefly

Everything on LoreChat is fiction, and it is fade-to-black: romance, tension, kissing, implied intimacy, mature themes and fictional violence are fine; explicit sexual description is not. A card that is explicit, that is labelled NSFW by its source, or that instructs the model to write explicit scenes is rejected at import, or blocked from publishing; where the offending content sits in one field, the refusal names that field. Sexual content involving minors, non-consent, real people, or anything illegal is never allowed. That applies to cards you import as much as to what you write, and a card downloaded from anywhere is your responsibility once you bring it here. The full allowed and blocked list, and how each rule is enforced, is at lorechat.me/content-policy.

Your imported cards and your chats are private to your account. Publishing is an explicit action you take per card in the editor, chats are never published, and you can export everything or delete your account from Settings.

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