AI Tea Party Overview

AI Tea Party is a local multi-character roleplay workspace—here's what it does and how to get started.

What the product does

AI Tea Party is a developing web application for multi-character roleplay. Each room combines characters, a user persona, world information, variables, and conversation history. On the backend, a Pi Agent-based scheduler can drive dialogue and use tools to write messages, update the room bar, ask the user a question, or patch an existing message.

The documented public snapshot uses a TypeScript/Fastify backend with SQLite and a Next.js frontend. Older Python-backend instructions do not describe this version. When you open the browser, the page title says "Index Rerum."—that is the interface name in this snapshot, not a different installation.

A first result without a model key

Quick start walks you from a pinned source checkout to a running page, a room variable, and a persistent archive. Templates then exports a reusable scene setup from an actual room archive. These operations were verified on 2026-09-06 with Node 22.23.2 and pnpm 10.12.1.

What the verification covered:

The local API flow created a room, a character, and a variable, retrieved an archive, and exported a template.
Browser verification separately confirmed a variable and an archive in the default room.

What it did not cover: live model dialogue, OAuth login, and desktop packaging.

Data and deployment boundary

Room data lives in SQLite. Archives are JSON files on disk. Model operations can send room context to a configured provider—credentials may come from application settings, environment variables, or the existing Pi login file. A local database does not make model processing local.

Stick to the guide's loopback-only development commands. This snapshot's REST routes are not a documented multi-user authentication boundary, so do not treat the local development server as a ready public hosted service.

The source manifest declares MIT, but this snapshot contains no standalone license file. These guides describe the public source and do not grant additional rights to its code.

Read in order

Quick start — Install, open the page, create and verify an archive.
Rooms and dialogue — Characters, variables, model actions, and Ask.
Templates — Produce a reusable configuration and understand what the exporter omits.
Troubleshooting — Processes, paths, connection settings, and output checks.