A realtime character presence for desktop voice experiences.

Persona is a cross-platform desktop character that gives voice conversations an expressive visual identity alongside your work.

Linux requires pw-dump and pw-record on PATH. Windows process-loopback requires Windows 10 build 20348 or newer. macOS asks once for System Audio Recording permission.

Each listener is scoped to the supported application's playback process. Persona does not capture the microphone, save audio, produce speech, transcribe content, or send audio over the network.

Requirements:

• Node.js 24 or newer
• npm
• A desktop session with hardware-accelerated graphics

The packaged character catalog is intentionally empty while the distributable defaults are being selected. Persona opens Settings on first launch so you can import a local .vrm model; ignored media files under public/assets/ are not loaded unless they are declared in the catalog.

To exercise the packaged-library path with the current ignored local test media, copy the provided examples over the active empty catalogs:

cp public/assets/library.json.example public/assets/library.json
cp public/assets/manifest.json.example public/assets/manifest.json

Both example files are directly usable and also document the complete catalog format. Their media remains test-only: the example manifest deliberately keeps distribution disabled and its license fields incomplete.

Packaged VRM files belong under public/assets/models/; packaged VRMA files belong under public/assets/animations/. A catalog can declare multiple packaged models. When default_model_id is null, Persona selects the first model record as the packaged default.

npm install
npm run demo

npm run demo builds the current renderer and launches Persona with normal automatic voice-output detection.

For a background launch:

npm start -- --background

Open Settings… from Persona's tray menu to manage the character library. You can preview installed models and animation actions together, choose the default model, set the character's initial size, and add your own .vrm and .vrma files.

Until a default model exists, Persona does not create the avatar window or start its voice-output listener. The first imported model becomes the default automatically.

Persona always provides Idle and Speaking action slots. They begin without media, so the model keeps its normal pose until you add clips. Each action can contain multiple .vrma files; uploads receive numbered names such as idle1, idle2, speaking1, or wave1. Persona chooses a clip from the action whenever that action runs.

Custom actions include a name, description, and trigger scenario. Persona adds that metadata to its MCP animation tool so a connected agent can understand what the action expresses and when to use it. Imported media and configuration changes stay in Persona's local application data.

Packaged media is immutable. Editing or removing a packaged action creates a user-level override without changing the installed application. Reset packaged actions restores shipped metadata and visibility while leaving user-created actions and uploaded clips untouched.

With Persona running, register its local MCP server:

codex mcp add persona --url http://127.0.0.1:47831/mcp

New Codex sessions can then ask Persona to play an installed animation, show or hide its window, and report whether the local character and voice listener are active. Persona remains a separate desktop application; the MCP connection only exposes its own visual controls.

The window intentionally contains no controls:

• Scroll to zoom.
• Left-drag to orbit.
• Right-drag to pan.
• Use your window manager's move gesture to reposition the window.

On Hyprland, Persona also applies floating, pinned, topmost, full-opacity, no-blur, no-shadow, and decoration-free properties. macOS uses an all-Spaces topmost window. Other desktops use the strongest supported Electron window hints.

Build on the operating system you are targeting:

npm run dist:linux
npm run dist:windows
npm run dist:mac

Outputs are written to release/. Windows needs Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ desktop workload. macOS needs Xcode Command Line Tools and macOS 14.2+ SDK support.

GitHub Actions runs the full JavaScript, renderer, native compile, and native self-test suite on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Prerelease tags shaped like v0.1.0-beta.0 create native packages and a checksum file, but only after the asset release gate passes. See Releasing.

Character media is intentionally excluded from Git. Local test files must not be distributed. The packaged library is declared without a hard-coded filename contract in source code:

public/assets/
├── library.json
├── library.json.example
├── manifest.json
├── manifest.json.example
├── models/
│   └── <model files declared by library.json>
└── animations/
    └── <animation files declared by library.json>

Define each packaged model and animation action in library.json. Action records carry their public name, description, trigger scenario, runtime type, and zero or more asset paths. The permanent system-idle and system-speaking records may have empty asset lists. Mirror every declared media path in manifest.json, then complete its license and source fields and set distributionAllowed to true. Remove the VRM and VRMA ignore rules only when the chosen files are safe to publish. The release workflow will fail closed until then. Read Asset licenses.

npm run check
npm run native:build
npm run native:test

The native listener is required before running Persona from source on macOS or Windows. Linux captures activity through PipeWire and does not build a helper.

More detail:

• Architecture and development
• Codex and integration API
• Release process
• Security policy

Persona application source is licensed under the MIT License. Bundled character assets are excluded from that license and remain test-only until replaced and documented.