Configure her

Everything has a sensible default, so you can skip this page. When you're curious: almost every setting can be changed while you play, in game, in a file, or on her dashboard.

Power and style

/kindred power advisor|helper|allpowerful and /kindred style grounded|magic decide what she may do, from only talking and finding things to changing time and weather. The table is in Playing with Pip.

Her liveliness

Pip moves like a small living thing: she springs instead of snapping, notices before she reacts, moves her eyes before her head, drifts, wanders and dozes. Every one of these is a switch, from a calm companion who just floats beside you to a curious one who wanders and plays. /kindred life lists them; /kindred life <name> <value> changes one (saved right away); /kindred life reset puts them back.

Skins

Switch with /kindred skin <name>; /kindred skins lists them. Built in: slime (glassy, her colour follows her mood), slime_cube, wisp, strawberry, starry, fairy, pixie and sprout.

Make your own in a minute

1. Draw an image twice as wide as it is tall, for example 64×32. It wraps around her like a world map around a globe; her face is a quarter of the way across from the left, in the middle vertically.
2. Put it in your game folder under config/kindredspirit/skins/, for example peach.png.
3. In game: /kindred skins reload, then /kindred skin peach.

The mod draws her eyes, mouth and cheeks on top, so a plain texture already gets a cute face. Add a peach.json next to it to choose the shape (ball, cube, wisp, fairy), the tint, a glassy shell, the face colours, size, glow, wings and a little sprout:

{
  "name": "Peach",
  "shape": "ball",
  "texture": "peach.png",
  "tint": "none",
  "cheeks": "#FF9E9E",
  "glow": false
}

Skins can also travel in a resource pack. Every field: docs/SKINS.md.

Where the settings live

Quality: quality = "auto" steps down to a simpler look when the game drops below 30 FPS for a few seconds, and climbs back when things are smooth. Or set low, medium or high yourself.

AI, voice and hearing: the gateway

Pip talks to the outside world through one address on your computer, the gateway. Behind it, each part can be a free tool on your computer or a service you already use, switched in one command without restarting the game:

G="brain/.venv/bin/python services/kindred_gateway.py"
$G check                  # tests every part
$G use ai ollama          # or gemini, claude, anthropic, groq, openai, openrouter, mistral
$G use stt groq           # speech-to-text: local_whisper, groq, openai
$G use tts openai         # voice: local_kokoro, openai
$G voice bf_emma          # another voice, or a blend like bf_lily*0.7+bf_emma*0.3

Her default voice is Kokoro's British bf_lily, a little brighter than normal, with moods: excited, calm, sad and whisper. Everything about providers, keys and voices: docs/GATEWAY.md.

Special instructions

Steer her from the game without touching any file:

• /kindred persona Speaks like a pirate. standing rules for how she behaves and speaks
• /kindred fact The base is at the lake. facts she knows to be true
• /kindred hint Tease them about the creeper. for her next reply only
• /kindred pause / resume, and /kindred instructions to see what's set

Her heart

In brain.toml, section [heart] (all optional), for example:

[heart]
same_companion_in_every_world = false  # true: one Pip who follows you between worlds
amnesia = true               # she discovers her powers with you; false: she knows them from the start
awakening = "slow"           # or "instant"
favours = true               # she may ask a small favour while a power wakes up
pranks = true                # playful pranks once you're friends
mischief_when_angry = "spicy"  # off | mild | spicy
can_vanish = true            # disappears for a while when mistreated
weather_follows_mood = true  # her tears bring rain, an apology brings the sun back (singleplayer)

All of them, and how her heart works: docs/HEART.md.

The dashboard

scripts/start.sh also starts a small dashboard. Open http://127.0.0.1:11440 in your browser while you play, or after. It listens only on your computer.

• Live: her bond and mood, friends in your world, powers waking up, what she sees, and exactly what was sent to the AI last.
• Conversation, AI calls, Speech & voice: everything she said and did, every AI call with its tokens and estimated cost, speech timings.
• Memory and Knowledge: her memories per world, with a search that shows what she'd recall, and what she knows about Minecraft.
• Blueprints: every building she can build, with pictures; add and remove files.
• Sessions: replay past play sessions, and see what went wrong.
• Try Pip: talk to her without the game, in a pretend world.
• Settings: every setting with its default, profiles to save and compare ("calm Pip", "chaotic Pip"). Changes apply live. Keys are never shown.

More: docs/DASHBOARD.md.