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0xhacker
0xhacker

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From Zero to Narratium: Building a Powerful AI Roleplay Platform as an Open Source Newbie

About me

Hi, I'm a 21-year-old student at Wuhan University majoring in Telecommunications Engineering — but more importantly, I’m a product hacker passionate about building tools at the edge of AI and storytelling.

Over the past year, I’ve participated in 10+ hackathons and won over $30,000 in prizes. I also published a software tool called Hacker Note in App Store, designed to streamline workflows for fast-paced builders like myself.

Now I’m diving into the world of open source with my latest project Narratium.ai:

Try it now


What is Narratium?

Narratium is an open-source AI storytelling platform designed to feel like VSCode for Roleplay. It allows users to create immersive(still in building), branching narratives using LLMs like OpenAI or Ollama, with a focus on character consistency, memory persistence, and personalized worldbuilding.

Unlike closed or overwhelming platforms, Narratium offers a structured, beginner-friendly experience while remaining deeply extensible for advanced users.


Why I Built It

As someone new to open-source, I often found existing tools either too closed (like AI Dungeon) or too complex (like SillyTavern). I wanted something in-between:

  • Open and hackable
  • Clean and consistent
  • Easy to start, but scalable over time

That’s why I built Narratium: to bring modularity, memory, and world logic into AI roleplay.


Key Features

  • Interactive, persistent storytelling with custom LLM backends
  • Graph-based memory system using React Flow
  • Support for SillyTavern character cards
  • Visual editors for worlds, dialogues, and branching logic
  • Offline support and desktop packaging via pake-cli

Technical Stack

  • TypeScript + React + Next.js
  • React Flow for session graph visualization
  • OpenAI / Ollama for model access
  • IndexedDB for local persistence
  • Regular Expression-based logic tools
  • Fully open-source under MIT / CC BY-NC-SA

Current Progress

  • 300+ GitHub Stars
  • 150–200 daily active users
  • 10M–60M token usage per day
  • Multiple active community contributors

Roadmap

  • Character card auto-generator using LLMs
  • Local-first RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)
  • Epic-length narrative structures
  • Public sharing of character cards and worlds

I’ll continue to post updates on Dev.to as Narratium evolves — feedback, suggestions, and discussions are all very welcome.

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