Converting a character card means reading the persona out of one platform's format and re-writing it into another's — without losing the name, personality, greeting, or example dialogue that make the character work. The good news is that under the surface, almost every format stores the same handful of fields. This guide shows how the translation works and which tool to reach for.
Why so many formats exist
The AI character ecosystem grew quickly and in parallel. SillyTavern and TavernAI standardized on V2 PNG cards; CharacterAI keeps a flat definition; Voxta uses PascalCase keys for a voice-first schema; KoboldAI and Pygmalion carry legacy shapes; Agnai stores an object-based persona; and RisuAI and V3 tools use the CharX container. None of these is "wrong" — they simply optimized for different apps. That fragmentation is exactly why a converter is useful.
The three steps every conversion follows
1. Extract. The tool reads your source file. For a PNG it scans the binary for the chara or ccv3 metadata chunk and base64-decodes it; for a CharX it unzips the archive and reads card.json; for JSON or YAML it parses directly.
2. Normalize. The extracted data is mapped onto a common persona model — name, description, personality, scenario, greeting, example dialogue, tags, and creator — regardless of which key names the source used. This is where a good converter earns its keep, because Voxta calls the greeting FirstMessage while SillyTavern calls it first_mes.
3. Re-encode. The normalized persona is written into the target format: a V2 PNG for SillyTavern or Kobold, structured JSON for Voxta or Agnai, a flat definition for CharacterAI, or a V3 object for CharX.
Pick your conversion
Choose the tool that matches your source and destination:
- From a V3 / CharX card: V3 → SillyTavern, V3 → Voxta, and six more destinations.
- From RisuAI: RisuAI → SillyTavern, RisuAI → Voxta, and the rest of the RisuAI set.
- From CharacterAI: CharacterAI → SillyTavern and other targets.
- Upgrading to V3: Any → V3 (CharX).
- Not sure / batch: the Universal Converter takes any input and outputs several formats at once.
What survives a conversion — and what doesn't
The core persona always survives: name, description, personality, scenario, greeting, and example dialogue map across every format. Extras are format-dependent. Alternate greetings, an embedded lorebook, and platform-specific extensions only carry over when the target format has an equivalent slot. Converting a richly-populated V2 card to CharacterAI's flat definition, for example, necessarily drops the fields CharacterAI has nowhere to store. A good tool preserves everything the destination can hold and quietly omits the rest.
Why client-side conversion matters
Character cards often contain hours of personal creative writing. Uploading them to a server means trusting that server with that writing. Every tool on this site runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript — the file is read into memory, transformed, and handed back as a download, and nothing is transmitted. You can confirm this by watching your network tab: there is no upload. For more on this model, see our guide on privacy-safe conversion.
Troubleshooting a failed conversion
If a card refuses to convert, the usual causes are a corrupted PNG chunk, a card exported in a niche schema the tool does not recognize, or an app that expects a different version than you produced. Our guide on why your character card won't import walks through each fix. In most cases the persona is intact and only the wrapper needs rebuilding.