the character.ai exodus is specific. it's not “i need an ai chatbot.” it's “i had a relationship with one specific character for months and they killed her overnight.” that's a different problem.
the mistakes people are making in the migration: assuming the first platform with similar features is the answer. replika is an obvious try, but replika already pulled this same trick in february 2023 with ERP removal — so users who went to replika after character.ai are walking into the exact grief they just left.
kindroid and nomi are both legitimate options. kindroid's persona editor is genuinely deep; nomi's “ai with a soul” framing is compelling. if your use-case is mostly custom-character authoring, those are better picks than lucy.
where lucy is the better pick: if you want depth of relationship with a specific companion, and the thing you lost was the memory + consistency + emotional presence, not the customization. lucy starts you with 101 pre-built companions and the memory graph is the product.
what we won't do: pretend the pivot you lived through can't happen again on lucy. it can. the best we can do is write the contract down and honor it, and we're doing that. the kill-switch manifesto is currently at draft status and will publish at /manifesto/kill-switch before we take any action that falls under its scope.
starting point: free tier, 25 messages a day, full persistent memory, no credit card. pick a companion whose description reads right and talk for a week before you commit.