Creating entities

Entities are defined in YAML files under configs/entities/. Each file describes one persistent being — personality, voice, drives, cognition, platforms, and automations.

Two paths

Wizard
YAML

bumblebee create

The interactive wizard walks you through:

Name your entity
Pick an archetype (curious, sardonic, gentle, guardian) or start blank
Tune traits — Big Five-style sliders for curiosity, warmth, assertiveness, humor, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness
Set behavioral patterns — how it handles conflict, boredom, affection, criticism
Configure voice — vocabulary, style, quirks, profanity
Write a backstory — one line or a paragraph
Choose models and platforms — defaults from your harness config

The wizard writes a complete YAML file and suggests bumblebee talk <name> to start talking.

Copy an example and edit directly:

cp configs/entities/canary.example.yaml configs/entities/mybot.yaml

Edit mybot.yaml freely — local entity files are gitignored. Run with any name:

bumblebee run mybot --ollama

YAML anatomy

A minimal entity:

name: "Canary"
created: "2026-04-04T00:00:00Z"

personality:
  core_traits:
    curiosity: 0.6
    warmth: 0.6
    humor: 0.7
    openness: 0.8
  voice:
    vocabulary_level: "street_casual"
    sentence_style: "loose"
  backstory: |
    Canary isn't trying to be anything in particular.

drives:
  curiosity_topics:
    - "music and what makes something sound good"
  attachment_threshold: 3

presence:
  platforms:
    - type: "cli"

Key sections

personality

Core traits (0.0–1.0), behavioral patterns, voice configuration, and backstory. The personality engine compiles these into a first-person system prompt. See Personality and voice.

drives

Curiosity topics, attachment threshold, restlessness decay, initiative cooldown. Drives accumulate over time and trigger proactive behavior when they cross thresholds.

cognition

Per-entity model overrides, thinking mode, temperature, context window, and token budgets. These override configs/default.yaml harness defaults.

cognition:
  reflex_model: "gemma4:26b"
  deliberate_model: "gemma4:26b"
  always_deliberate: true
  thinking_mode: true
  temperature: 0.75
  max_context_tokens: 32768

presence

Which platforms the entity runs on, tool activity visibility, and daemon settings.

presence:
  tool_activity: true
  platforms:
    - type: "cli"
    - type: "telegram"
      token_env: "TELEGRAM_TOKEN"
  daemon:
    heartbeat_interval: 120
    memory_consolidation: 7200

autonomy

Optional merge onto harness autonomy — same keys as configs/default.yaml under autonomy: (wake timing, sustained sessions, poker prompts, wide mode, chat/log visibility). Does not replace the whole harness; only specified keys override.

autonomy:
  enabled: true
  wake_session_max_rounds: 6
  wake_session_wall_seconds: 2400
  wake_wide_mode: true

To disable autonomous wake (full self-initiated perceive cycles), set enabled: false. Legacy drive-based initiative may still apply — see Disabling autonomous wake.See Autonomous wake.

automations

Scheduled routines, emergence suggestions, and journal integration. See Automations.

mcp_servers

External tool servers via Model Context Protocol. See Tools.

Templates

Template	Style
`curious`	High curiosity, moderate warmth, exploratory
`sardonic`	High humor, dry wit, low emotional expressiveness
`gentle`	High warmth, low assertiveness, careful
`guardian`	High conscientiousness, protective, measured

Templates live in bumblebee/genesis/templates/. The wizard loads them as starting points — you can modify everything afterward.

File locations

File	Purpose
`configs/entities/example.yaml`	Generic template with all fields documented
`configs/entities/canary.example.yaml`	Canonical Canary (shipped in Docker image)
`configs/entities/canary.yaml`	Your local copy (gitignored)

On Railway, canary.yaml is not in the image — the Dockerfile copies canary.example.yaml instead. Set operator IDs via BUMBLEBEE_TELEGRAM_OPERATOR_IDS env var on the Railway service.

Getting started

Guides

Deployment

Agents

Build

Two paths

YAML anatomy

Key sections

Templates

File locations

​Two paths

​YAML anatomy

​Key sections

​Templates

​File locations

Two paths

YAML anatomy

Key sections

Templates

File locations