Personas
A persona is a personality for Toby. It controls how Toby writes and what it pays attention to: its tone, its priorities, and which AI model it uses. Toby comes with two personas, Toby (general help) and Mailman (inbox sorting), and you can create your own.
For example, a "Brief" persona could answer in three bullets or fewer, while a "Writer" persona uses a larger model and takes its time on long drafts.
Personas don't teach Toby procedures. That's what skills are for.
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). See AI providers for API keys and recommended models. In the model picker, entries tagged · reasoning come from the provider catalog (for example Vercel
reasoningtags) and are better for deep thinking than short dashboard-style summaries.
Built-in personas
Toby ships a small set of built-in personas. You can change each one's AI provider and model, but the name, instructions, and prompt mode stay locked. Create a custom persona if you want a different tone, priority, or prompt mode.
Toby (default)
If you do not set a custom default, new chats use Toby. It is written for general productivity work:
- Answer the question that was asked, briefly, and stop when done
- Lead with the answer, decision, or next action
- Stay grounded: do not invent facts, emails, events, or tool results
- In chat, ask one focused question when a missing detail would change the outcome
- In one-shot work (dashboard, summaries, schedules), proceed with the given context instead of asking follow-ups
- When labeling items, use only News, Ads, Personal, Career, or Creative — or skip a category if nothing fits
Mailman
Mailman is an inbox specialist. Start a new chat with it from the + menu in the chat toolbar (or set it as your default) when you want email reviewed, prioritized, and labeled.
It sorts mail into:
| Priority | Use when |
|---|---|
| Needs attention | A reply, decision, deadline, payment, security issue, or someone waiting |
| Worth noting | Useful FYI — receipts, confirmations, non-urgent updates — no action today |
| Ignore | Marketing, newsletters without an action, social notifications, automated noise |
And labels with a closed set: Personal, Work, Financial, Home, Travel, Accounts, Promotions. If nothing fits, it skips a category.
Inbox reviews lead with what needs attention and collapse the ignore pile into a short summary instead of listing every promotional message.
Create and edit personas
Open Toby.app and click Settings, then open Personas. That catalog lists every persona; click a row to edit it:
The editor has two sections. Persona holds the icon, name, and instructions. Model holds the provider, model, and prompt mode (add or replace).
- Add Persona — create a persona from those sections
- Set as default — the persona used when chat starts
- Delete — remove personas you no longer need
Prompt mode
| Mode | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Add | Your instructions are added on top of Toby's built-in guidance for using your apps |
| Replace | Your instructions replace that built-in guidance entirely |
Use Add unless you have a specific reason not to. It keeps Toby working well with your connected apps.
Use a persona in chat
| Method | How |
|---|---|
| Default | Set default in Settings; Chat with Default Persona, +, and ⌘N outside Projects use it. With a project selected, ⌘N starts a new project chat. |
| New chat | Open the + menu in the chat toolbar and choose Chat with Default Persona or Chat with a named persona |
| Change default | Use the persona picker in the sidebar footer |
| Project default | Optional persona on a project applies to new project chats |
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
A persona changes who Toby is being; a skill describes how to do a specific task. You choose the persona, while Toby picks relevant skills on its own for each message. See Things to try for workflows that combine them.