sal.jpg
Hey, I'm Sal π
I build, run, break, and fix Character Tavern. All of it. This page is the story of how a weekend project got completely out of hand.
π§What This Place Stands For
Features come and go. These don't. Everything on this site, from character and chat downloads to the way we handle your privacy, traces back to one of them.
Independence
The reason all of this holds. There's no corporation behind CT and KI. No investors, no shareholders, no growth team. One developer and a handful of volunteers answering to the regulars instead of a quarterly report, and nobody who can force a pivot.
Ownership
Your characters and chats are yours. Both can be downloaded in open, SillyTavern-compatible formats and taken anywhere, at any time. If you ever leave, they leave with you. CT is part of the SillyTavern ecosystem, not a walled garden holding your creations hostage.
Privacy
What happens in your chats stays private. No data selling, no ad profiles, no one reading through them as a matter of course. Privacy isn't a premium tier here, it's the default.
Accessibility
Advanced AI roleplay shouldn't require technical expertise. Chat right in your browser, with a setup that's simplified and guided instead of API key homework. And when you want the deep end, the knobs are all there, including your pick of dozens of models. Easy to pick up, powerful for power users.
Freedom
Room to create the way you want. The rules that exist protect the shared library; they don't police your imagination.
Community
This place is made of people, not inventory. The library is built by the community, volunteers keep it safe, and a human reads every report. When the community pushes back on something, a person listens.
πThe Story
Character Tavern started in November 2023 as a random side project to learn TypeScript. That's it. That's the whole origin story.
Okay, there's slightly more. I was browsing chub at the time and thought the UI... let's say it wasn't for me. So instead of complaining about it like a normal person, I rebuilt the whole front-end and pointed it at the same catalog. "Chub, but with a better UI." A learning project. It was never supposed to be a platform.
Then people showed up. Then they wanted to make characters here, so I built the Creation Studio. Then they wanted to chat here instead of exporting everything to SillyTavern, so I built the chat. Then the library outgrew its origins and became fully community-made. Then... shenanigans.
Almost three years later, the TypeScript practice project has over 204K users and I still haven't finished learning TypeScript.
πΊοΈThe Quest Log
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Nov 2023
First commit. "Chub, but with a better UI" is born.
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Jul 2024
The Creation Studio opens. The first characters made on CT itself appear.
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Sep 2024
Chat launches, right in your browser. No SillyTavern required, no setup, no API key homework.
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Oct 2024
We stop indexing chub. From here on, the library is community-driven.
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Jan 2025
10K public characters made in the Studio. You people don't sleep either, huh.
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Sep 2025
100K users. I re-ran the query three times to be sure.
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Jun 2026
Kyara Intelligence launches, the AI engine that now powers CT.
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Today
Still just me. Somehow.
π―The Numbers
Numbers, because people like numbers:
19K
characters in the tavern
204K
adventurers
288K
messages a day
π οΈMeet The Team
CT has never had a team. Here's the team anyway:
Sal
Frontend Dev
makes the buttons
Sal
Backend Dev
makes the buttons do things
Sal
QA Department
finds bugs by shipping them
Sal
DevOps
on call, currently asleep
Sal
Design
has opinions about spacing
Sal
The Intern
also me
The Moderation Team
actual volunteers, actual heroes, they read every single report
There's no support department, no ops rotation, no one on call. When you send a report, it's read by a person. When a feature ships at midnight, it's because that was the only window left after a full day of other work. When something breaks on a Sunday, it gets fixed on a Sunday. Or it waits, because I was asleep.
That's the honest trade. It means CT moves in bursts: quiet for weeks, then four things at once. It means support is slower than you'd get somewhere with a rota. It also means every decision here is made by someone who actually uses the site, and when the community pushes back on something, I can just listen.
The volunteers who moderate here do it because they care about the place, not because it's a job. Most of what I build behind the scenes is to make their work lighter. That part rarely shows up in a changelog, but it's where a lot of the hours go.
π»Say Hi
If you made it this far: thank you. Genuinely. Every character created, every chat started, every bug report (even the angry ones) is why this place exists.
Come hang out on the Discord server. I'm around more than is probably healthy.