Serene Pub 0.4

Welcome to the next feature release for Serene Pub! A beginner friendly, but powerful AI role-play application.

Local AI roleplay shouldn't require a computer science degree. We're on the warpath to make it as stress-free as possible.

Integrated Ollama model management + universal tagging system

What's New

Ollama Manager

• Browse and download roleplay-optimized models directly in Serene Pub
• One-click model installation with live progress tracking
• One-click activation, no need to manually configure connections
• View model details and manage storage

First Time Setup Wizard

• Brand new guided setup experience for new users
• Streamlined onboarding process from installation to first chat

Tags System

• Tag characters, personas, chats, and lorebooks
• Filter content by tags in the new tags sidebar
• Visual organization with color-coded tags

Easier Character & Persona Creation

• New step-by-step creation tools guide you through the entire process
• Interactive modals break complex character creation into simple steps
• Advanced fields hidden by default for simpler workflow

Accessibility & Screen Reader Support

• New focus on accessibility improvements (WIP, community feedback is very much needed!)
• Enhanced screen reader compatibility
• Keyboard shortcuts for most actions

Bug Fixes, etc

• Resolved stability issues and various UI improvements
• Database lock to prevent Pglite from getting corrupted
• Most forms can now be saved regardless of if changes are detected or not
• Zod form schema enforcement on most forms
• .env support, configure your ports and data directory

Getting Started

1. Download Serene Pub 0.4
2. Extract and run run.cmd (Windows) or run.sh (Mac/Linux)
3. Follow the setup wizard steps (5 minutes)
4. Start chatting

Coming Soon

• AI Assistant: Get help creating and editing characters - it can write and edit content for you

Community

• Documentation (WIP - updated regularly)
• Discord
• Issues

Serene Pub - Play more, tweak less. 100% open source.

Special thanks to crazyaphro for Q/A, M3d4r for editing the Wiki, and Nivelle for early accessability feedback.

✨ Mid-Release Improvements

Enhanced Startup Experience

• Improved startup message with ASCII art branding and clearer instructions
• Auto-open in browser - Serene Pub now automatically opens in your default browser when the server starts

Character Card Enhancements

• Fixed v3 character card imports - Character cards now import correctly with proper metadata handling
• Added JSON character card support - Direct import of JSON-formatted character cards is now supported
• Improved character card detection and processing logic

UI/UX Improvements

• Fixed overflow issues in character/persona selection modals when many characters are available
• Fixed horizontal overflow on chat message content - long text now wraps properly instead of breaking layout

🐛 Other Bug Fixes

Connection & Form Fixes

• Fixed LM Studio connection form - Resolved issue where the form would lock up due to reactive loops in Svelte
• Fixed OpenAI connection creation - Connections can now be created without requiring a valid API key upfront

As always, we appreciate your feedback and bug reports. Thank you for using Serene Pub! 🎉

Special thanks to Nivelle and crazyaphro for pro-active testing and bug reporting.

Known issues

• Windows: Some AV's such as BitDefender flag run.cmd as malware. This is specific file is a false positive.

📂 Changes in this release

1. Fixed and re-enabled support for LM Studio's native API.
2. Resolved an issue on Windows hosts where network devices couldn't connect to Serene Pub's web-socket.
3. Removed current character's name from stop strings, and instead programmatically remove the name from the beginning of the response. This particularly affected KoboldCPP.

🙏 Special Thanks

Special thanks to crazyaphro for Q/A, M3d4r for editing the Wiki, and Nivelle for early feedback.

🌟 Serene Pub v0.3.0

Serene Pub is an open source, locally hosted AI client built specifically for immersive roleplay and storytelling. It focuses on presenting a clean interface and easy configuration for users who would rather not feel like they need a PHD in AI or software development. With built-in real-time sync and offline-first design, Serene Pub helps you stay in character, not in the configuration menu.

After weeks of refinement and feedback, I’m excited to announce the 0.3.0 alpha release of Serene Pub — a modern, open source AI client focused on ease of use and role-playing.

✨ What's New in 0.3.0 Alpha

📚 Lorebooks+

• Create and manage World Lore, Character Lore, and History entries.
• Character Bindings: Hot-swappable character and persona bindings to your lorebook. Bindings are used to dynamically insert names into your lore book entries, or link character lore.
• World Lore: Traditional lorebook entries that you are already familiar with. Describe places, items, organizations—anything relevant to your world.
• Character Lore: Lore entries that are attached to character bindings. These lore entries extend your character profiles.
• History: Chronological lore entries that can represent a year, month or day. Provide summaries of past events or discussions. The latest entry is considered the "current date," which can be automatically referenced in your context configuration.

🧰 Other Updates

• In-app update notifications – Serene Pub will now (politely) notify you when a new release is available on GitHub.

• Preset connection configurations – Built-in presets make it easy to connect to services like OpenRouter, Ollama, and other OpenAI-compatible APIs.

• UI polish & bug fixes – Ongoing improvements to mobile layout, theming, and token/prompt statistics.

⚡ Features Recap

Serene Pub already includes:

• ✅ WebSocket-based real-time sync across windows/devices
• ✅ Custom prompt instruction blocks
• ✅ 10+ themes and dark mode
• ✅ Offline/local-first — no account or cloud required

• Official Discord

🚀 Try It Now

1. Download the latest release
2. Extract the archive and execute run.sh (Linux/MacOS) or run.cmd (Windows)
3. Visit http://localhost:3000
4. Add a model, create a character, and start chatting!

Reminder: This project is in Alpha. It is being actively developed, expect bugs and significant changes!

🆙 Upgrading from 0.2.2 to 0.3.x

Serene Pub now uses a new database backend powered by PostgreSQL via pglite.

• Upgrading your data from 0.2.2 to 0.3.x is supported only during the 0.3.x release window.
• Future releases (e.g. 0.4.x and beyond) will not support direct migration from 0.2.2.

⚠️ To preserve your data, please upgrade to 0.3.x before jumping to future versions.

📹 Video Guide Coming Soon

I will try to record an in-depth walk-through in the next week!

🧪 Feedback Needed

This release was only tested on Linux x64 and Windows x64. Support for other platforms is experimental and feedback is urgently needed.

• If you run into issues, please open an issue or reach out.
• Bug patches will be released in the coming days/weeks based on feedback and severity.

Your testing and suggestions are extremely appreciated!

🐞 Known Issues

1. LM Chat support is currently disabled:
   • The native LM Chat API has been disabled due to bugs in their SDK.
   • Their OpenAI-compatible endpoint also has unresolved issues.
   • Recommendation: Use Ollama for the most stable and user-friendly local model experience.

🔮 Coming Soon (0.4.0 – 0.6.0)

These features are currently being planned and will hopefully make it into upcoming releases:

1. Seamless chat and lorebook vectorization – enable smarter memory and retrieval for characters and world info.
2. Ollama Management Console – download, manage, and switch models directly within Serene Pub.
3. Serene Pub Assistant Chat – get help from a built-in assistant for documentation, feature walkthroughs, or character design.
4. Tags – organize personas, characters, chats, and lorebooks with flexible tagging.

🗨️ Final Thoughts

Thank you to everyone who has tested, contributed, or shared ideas! Your support continues to shape Serene Pub. Try it out, file an issue, and let me know what features you’d love to see next. Reach out on Github, Reddit or Discord.

• Official Discord Server

• Remove extra migration breakpoint

Removed extra connection types for Ollama

Introduction

I'm excited to release a significant update for Serene Pub. Some fixes, UI improvements and additional connection adapter support. Also context template has been overhauled with a new strategy.

Attention!

Create a copy of your main.db before running this new version to prevent accidental loss of data. If some of your data disappears, please let us know!

See the README.md for your database location

Update Notes

• Added OpenAI (Chat Completions) support in connections.
  • Can enable precompiling the entire prompt, which will be sent as a single user message.
  • There are some challenges with consistency in group chats.
• Added LM Studio support in connections.
  • There's much room to better utilize LM Studio's powerful API.
  • TTL is currently disabled to ensure current settings are always used.
  • Response will fail (ungracefully) if you set your context tokens higher than the model can handle
• Group chat is here!
  • Add as many characters as you want to your chats.
  • Keep an eye on your current token count in the bottom right corner of the chat
  • "Group Reply Strategy" is not yet functional, leave it on "Ordered" for now.
  • Control to "continue" the conversation (characters will continue their turns)
  • Control to trigger a one time response form a specific character.
• Added a prompt inspector to review your current draft.
• Overhauled with a new context template rendering strategy that deviates significantly from Silly Tavern.
  • Results in much more consistent data structures for your model to understand.

Full Changelog: v0.1.0-alpha...v0.2.0-alpha

Serene Pub 0.1.0 Alpha – First Public Release!

Welcome to the first public alpha of Serene Pub! This release brings a modern, streamlined chat app for immersive roleplay and creative conversations. Now available for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Please provide feedback, bugs and suggestions!

Warning

Serene Pub is in ALPHA, expect bugs and potential loss of chat/character data.

API/Connections

Connections are still under development. Currently, only Ollama is officially supported.

See here for potentially supported options in the future.