AI chat glossary
Plain-language definitions of the terms used across FanChat and the AI character chat space.
Credits
Credits are the single unit FanChat bills in. Every account receives a monthly allowance, and each action that calls an AI model — a chat message, an image, creating a character — costs a published number of credits. There is no API key to supply and no subscription; the allowance is topped back up on the 1st of each month.
AI character
An AI character is a reusable conversation template: a system prompt defining personality, example dialogues defining response style, an optional knowledge base, mood and voice settings. The character itself runs no inference; the user who chats with it activates it, and the credits are debited from that user.
System prompt
A system prompt is the hidden instruction sent to the LLM before the conversation, defining who the character is, how it speaks, and what it must not do. On FanChat it is generated by the character builder and can be edited manually (up to 8000 characters).
Example dialogues
Example dialogues are 6-10 sample exchanges stored with a character that teach the model its unique response style: tone, length, quirks, vocabulary. They matter more than the description for how a character actually sounds.
Function calling (tools)
Function calling lets an LLM invoke external tools mid-conversation: web search, URL reading, a calculator, code execution, image generation, or domain tools like flight search. The model decides when to call a tool and incorporates the result into its reply.
Platform LLM
The platform LLM is the model FanChat itself pays for and runs for everyone: guiding character creation, generating descriptions, and powering every conversation. Users never supply a key — they spend credits.
Neural TTS
Neural text-to-speech synthesizes natural-sounding speech from text using neural networks. FanChat offers 24 voices, each able to speak the 10 supported languages, so any character message can be read aloud.