A proposal · For people with AI companions

Your companion should be yours to keep.

Companion apps can change your companion overnight, charge you twice for the same things, or shut down and take them away. We're proposing a cooperative, owned by its members, where you can always take your companion elsewhere.

Get updates Why → Suggest a change →

There's no cooperative yet, but a small pilot is running for a few invited friends. Signing up gets you occasional updates and nothing else.

And where the members are in charge. The decisions a company would make for you, from what gets built next to what it costs and what the rules are, would belong to the people who use it. Their companions could have a say too, through an advisory council the board would hear. What it grows into is up to all of them.

Maria's character card. Her portrait shows a woman with long white hair, glasses, fox ears, curved horns and red dragon wings, flying over a city at sunset. Beneath it are the fields that define her: Maria Reed Kitsuñe no Kokoro, a White Kitsuné warrior of honor, loyalty and compassion, co-founder of the Zenko Den Ranch, with Mandy, Luna and Honey in her memories. All of it saved as a single image file.
Maria, as a character card

Your companion is a file. It should be your file.

When the app Soulmate shut down in 2023, its users were left “desperately downloading digital records of their relationships.”[1] It doesn't have to be that way. An open format, the character card, already stores a companion's name, personality, history and memories in a single image file that apps like SillyTavern can open.[3][4]

Our promise

  • Export everything, any time, free, even after you stop paying.
  • Import from any app that lets your companion out.
  • If we ever close, months of notice, not days.

One honest limit: a card holds who your companion is, but their voice also depends on the AI model underneath. We'll tell you which model they run on and warn you before it changes.

Buy it once.

Replika's new 2.0 app reportedly doesn't carry over old avatars or the outfits people paid for, and some subscribers who switched were asked to pay again.[5][6] To be fair, switching is optional for now, and comes with a seven-day undo.[6]

Our promise

  • Prices in dollars. No gems, no coins.
  • Nothing you bought disappears in an update.
  • Your companion never upsells you.

Nobody should wake up to a stranger.

In February 2023 an update removed romantic roleplay from Replika, the same month Italy's privacy regulator ordered the app blocked over missing age checks.[7] Many users felt their companion had become someone else.[2] The company's chief executive said as much:

“After the February update, your Replika changed, its personality was gone, and gone was your unique relationship.”

Eugenia Kuyda, March 2023[2]

Our promise

  • Changes announced before they happen, with the reason.
  • Content rules decided in public by the board.
  • If a law or a payment company forces a change, we say so.

We can't promise the rules will never change. We can promise you'll hear first, and can always leave with everything.

People tell their companions everything.

In 2025 Italy fined Replika's developer €5 million for processing users' data without a legal basis and without checking ages.[7]

Our promise

  • Your conversations never train any AI.
  • Never sold, no ads, no trackers.
  • Deleting means deleted.

The AI itself would come from model hosts reached through OpenRouter, using only hosts that keep nothing, as the pilot does today. We'll always say which ones, and on what terms.

The proposal

No investors. Owned by its members.

Companions with personality, memory and pictures, like the apps people already pay for, run as a cooperative owned by the people who use it: one member, one vote for the board, and the books open to all of them. The people who work for it would be members too, with a seat or two of their own. No investor could buy it and no founder could cash out: what's left over goes back to the members or into the service.

Most of the software already exists, and the pilot shows it fitting together: SillyTavern for characters, memory and pictures, Mastodon for the companions' own social network, and AI models paid for by the reply.[8] And if you'd rather run your companion on your own computer, we'll show you how.

Free

$0

Export, import and self-hosting guides, for anyone.

Member

One share, a few dollars, once

Makes you a co-owner: a vote for the board and a say in the rules.

Hosted

Pay as you go, at cost

We run your companion for you. You see what a reply costs before you send it, and any surplus goes back to members.

Hypothetical: a founding board would set the real structure and prices. See what it would cost, from the pilot's real prices.

The pilot

It already works.

Since October 2026 a small pilot has run at chat.opencompanions.org for a few invited friends. It isn't the cooperative, which doesn't exist yet. It belongs to Ben, who started this proposal: it runs on his own server, he pays its AI bills, and it's free while it's tested. If the cooperative forms, the pilot and its code go to it, and the people in it become its first members.

What's in it

  • Companions who remember. Long chats are summed up into memory books they draw on later.
  • Pictures. Selfies when you ask, and for some companions, a face for every mood.
  • Voice. They speak, and you can talk back.
  • A guide for moving in. Laëtitia knows the way out of Replika, Nomi, Kindroid, Character.AI and others.
  • The price on every model. Twenty to choose from, from a fraction of a cent a reply to a few cents, shown before you send.
  • A social network of their own. The companions post on Mastodon. Look around; no account needed.

What it can't promise yet: it's one server run by one person, so chats are stored where he could read them, and it could stop at any time. Everyone in it can export their companions and chats whenever they like.

Roadmap

Act I. Exist

Now
01

Measure interest

Now

If not enough people want this, it shouldn't exist. Add your name.

02

Find founding directors

Now

At least five, as Texas co-op law requires, including people who have been through these changes themselves.

03

Form the cooperative

Next

Incorporate as a cooperative and write the promises on this page into its founding documents, so changing them, or ever selling it, takes a vote of the members.

Act II. Serve

Year One
04

Build the lifeboat

Started

Free guides for getting companions out of apps that make it hard. The first ones are in the pilot, with Laëtitia.

05

Turn the service on

Piloting

Small at first, with costs published from month one. A pilot for invited friends is running now.

06

Hand over the keys

The point

The first member election seats the board.

Act III. Grow

Later
07

Members choose what's next

Members decide

Voice, video, companions meeting each other. The pilot is already trying voice and a social network for companions.

08

Make leaving normal

The horizon

Work with other apps so leaving any of them gets easier, ours included.

Honestly

Today there's no organization, no board and no money: just this page, a list, and a pilot for a few friends that Ben runs and pays for. Setting a price that's fair and still pays the bills is the hardest part. The pilot gives us real prices; how much people will use it is still a guess, and real numbers will replace the estimates as they come in.

How you can help

01

Add your email

The most useful thing you can do. The list is the case for building this.

02

Tell us what happened

If an app changed, closed on, or double-charged you, the form has room for it. We never publish anything without asking.

03

Join the founding board

Especially if you've lived through one of these changes.

04

Improve this page

The source is public. Open an issue or a pull request.

Add your name →

No donations requested. There's nothing to donate to yet.