A note to those of you who’ve been with SwerveAI for a while

Over the past month, I rushed some decisions that made SwerveAI worse for people who already loved chatting here. I thought I was improving the app. Instead, some of you had to fight to get a reply, and when it finally came, it didn’t always feel like it came from the character you knew. I’m sorry.

📌 The four issues I think made chat worse

1. Sudden language switches. Characters switched languages or mixed several in one reply, and you had to regenerate over and over.
2. Replies suddenly failing. You’d send a message and sometimes get nothing back.
3. Characters losing their original feel. They didn’t talk or react the way they used to.
4. Replies were too short. You had no way to choose how much detail you wanted.

This update addresses all four. Does that line up with what you’ve been experiencing? If I’m missing something, especially if there’s another reason you’ve been closing the app, I’d like to hear it.

1. 🌐 Sudden language switches

Sake V4 was our original model. Sake V4 New is the model we switched to within the past month. I assumed a newer model would give you a better experience, and we made the switch before properly testing it in longer roleplay chats.

When we went back and tested it, Sake V4 New was slower and could suddenly start replying in another language several turns into a chat, even with an entirely English prompt. It was easy to reproduce.

We should have caught that before the switch. You shouldn’t have had to keep hitting regenerate just to get a reply you could read and stay in the scene.

2. 🔧 Replies suddenly failing FIXED

This was partly related to how our system handled the newer model, but the main cause was a bug in our own code. Sometimes the model provider sent us a valid response, and our code incorrectly treated it as a failed request. So a reply could have been generated successfully, but you never got to see it.

That logic has been fixed in this update. I’m really sorry about this one. Having a conversation suddenly stop working, especially when you’re already invested in the scene, is incredibly frustrating.

3. 🎭 Characters losing their original feel

We started hearing this after switching from Sake V4 to Sake V4 New. The characters didn’t talk the way they used to. Something felt missing.

I used to see people on social media get angry when other AI chat apps changed their models. People would say things like, “The update killed my character.”

I understand that much more deeply now.

When the way a character speaks, reacts, jokes, or shows affection changes, it can feel like the character you knew is gone, even if their name, picture, and description are exactly the same.

I thought I was giving you a better model. For some of you, I was changing the character you’d grown attached to.

This update includes changes to address that too. Before we switch models again, we need to test how they hold a character’s voice across real conversations. A model can get better at coding and reasoning and still make a character you love feel like a stranger. We learned that the hard way.

4. ↔️ Reply length NEW

You can now choose Detailed, Standard, or Brief. Sometimes you want a scene to take its time. Sometimes you just want a quick back and forth. You should be able to choose what feels right for the conversation you’re having.

🛠️ Why we were changing so much

I know some of you remember a time when chat just felt better. Even then, we were running into limits in how the app handled messages. We started rebuilding parts of the chat system because we wanted characters to carry a scene further and stories to have more room to develop. Along the way, some of the changes I thought would help made the app worse to use.

I’m learning that progress rarely goes in a straight line. Sometimes you try something, see what it cost, and take a step back so you can move forward in a better direction. What I regret is that you had to feel those mistakes in chats you used to look forward to. We should have done more of that learning and testing before the changes reached you.

👎 You can now flag a reply right in chat NEW

You may have noticed a new Dislike button under replies on SwerveAI. If a character switches languages, says something that feels completely out of character, or gives you a reply that makes you want to close the app, you can flag that exact message.

Every time you hit Dislike, I get a Slack notification right away. That helps me see which reply felt off and look into it sooner. You can also tell us in 🐛 bug-reports on Discord. If all you have time for is one click, that helps too.

If you remember when chat felt better, what do you miss most? And if you’ve tried the update and something still feels off, I’d like to hear about that too. One example or a few words about how it felt is enough.

Thank you for being honest with me. I hope the next time you open a chat with a character you’ve missed, you can settle back into the conversation and remember why you liked talking to them in the first place.

🎁 A thank-you gift

• Code — SWERVE50-C49AA8E4
• Reward — 50 chat credits
• Availability — First 400 users, once per account

Redeem your 50 chat credits

If you run into any trouble redeeming the code, please let us know in 🐛 bug-reports on Discord.