Personas
A persona is a named profile that shapes how Toby thinks and prioritizes: instructions, AI model, and whether those instructions add to or replace the base integration prompt.
Personas do not describe step-by-step procedures—that is what skills are for. Together, a persona plus relevant skills let the same task produce different outcomes depending on your lens.
How personas help
- Prioritization — A “technologist” persona cares more about technical threads; a “project manager” persona cares more about schedules and cross-team coordination.
- Tone and depth — Instructions can ask for brevity, bullet summaries, or executive-level framing.
- Model choice — Each persona can use a different provider and model (for example, a faster model for triage, a larger one for drafting).
Built-in default: Toby
If you do not set a custom default, Toby uses the built-in Toby persona. It includes general assistant behavior and optional categorization guidance (News, Ads, Personal, Career, Creative) when labeling or organizing items.
Create and edit personas
toby config
Open Personas:
- New Persona — add a name, instructions, prompt mode, provider, and model
- Set as default — the persona used when chat starts
- Delete — remove personas you no longer need
Personas are stored in ~/.toby/config.json.
Prompt mode
| Mode | Behavior |
|---|---|
add | Persona instructions are appended to the integration system prompt |
replace | Persona instructions replace the integration system prompt |
Most users start with add so integration-specific tool guidance stays intact.
Use a persona in chat
| Method | How |
|---|---|
| Default | Set default in configure; new sessions use it |
| Switch in chat | /persona or Shift+Tab |
| One-shot CLI | toby chat --persona "Technologist" |
Example personas
Technologist
Instructions (summary): Prioritize technical subject matter—architecture, bugs, infra, and engineering discussions—over marketing or general admin email.
Good for: Inbox triage when you want code and systems topics first.
Project manager
Instructions (summary): Prioritize deadlines, meeting requests, blockers, and messages that affect team coordination or delivery dates.
Good for: Standup prep and cross-functional threads.
Executive assistant
Instructions (summary): Be concise; surface only items needing a decision or same-day action; defer low-priority newsletters.
Good for: A short daily briefing before meetings.
Personas vs skills
| Persona | Skill | |
|---|---|---|
| Role | Lens and priorities | How to perform a task |
| Storage | config.json | ~/.toby/skills/.../SKILL.md |
| Selection | You choose (default, /persona, --persona) | Toby picks relevant skills per message |
| Example | “Act like a technologist” | “Steps to organize email by project” |