When you have one AI assistant, it does not much matter what it is called or how it sounds. When you have a team of eight, it matters a lot. You need to know at a glance which bot wrote the draft, which one is asking for approval, and which one you are talking to on a call.
In Murage, every bot can have four things that make it its own: a name, a face, a voice and a personality. Here is what each one does, and what it needs.
A name and a job
Every bot has a name, a title and a set of instructions. The first bot in a new workspace, your Chief of Staff, is always called Ember. Later bots get a name from a pool, like Scout, Pixel or Moss, and bots from the team library come with their own, such as Mira for brand or Coin for numbers. You can rename any of them.
The title is the bot's role, like "Market Research Lead" or "Support". The instructions are what it is for, in your words. Together they tell you, and the rest of the team, what this bot does.
A face
By default, each bot is a small flame mascot. You can change its color, its expression and its body shape, with ten shapes to choose from. It sounds trivial, but when the sidebar holds a dozen bots, a green round flame and a purple pointed one are much easier to tell apart than two gray circles.
If you want more than the mascot, there are two options in the bot's settings, on the Overview page:
- Upload an image of your own.
- Generate an avatar. Type an optional direction, up to 400 characters, such as "a calm navigator", and press Generate avatar. Murage creates an illustrated square portrait for that bot, based on its name, role and description plus your direction.
Generated avatars use Flux Router, or your own OpenAI image key. They are illustrations, not photos: the prompt Murage uses rules out lifelike photos, identifiable people, words and logos.
One thing to know: the direction you type changes how the bot looks, not how it talks. That is the personality's job.
A personality
Each bot has a Personality field, up to 280 characters. The placeholder gives you the idea: "Direct, a little snarky, dry wit…"
Unlike the avatar direction, this changes how the bot behaves. The personality is sent to the model with every turn, so a bot set to "calm, precise, never uses jargon" writes differently from one set to "upbeat, brief, a little informal".
A few uses we like:
- Make the reviewer bot blunt, so its feedback is useful.
- Make the customer-facing drafter warm, so drafts need less softening.
- Make the Chief of Staff brief, so reports get to the point.
Personality sits on top of your House Rules, which every bot reads first. So a snarky bot is still one that never promises prices in your name.
If you ever want to see exactly how a bot is being shaped, open What shapes this bot. It lists everything the bot reads, in order, and can show you the last turn word for word.
A voice
Murage 0.1.59 added real-time voice calls. You can call any bot and just talk: interrupt it, say "stop", ask it to look something up. It hands real work to its own engine while it keeps talking to you. So each bot's voice matters.
You choose a voice per bot. Through Flux Router there are 41 named voices, each with a short description and an accent, such as "Kira: Upbeat, confident, American". You can also use:
- the free system voices built into Mac and Windows
- ElevenLabs, with your own key
- xAI or OpenAI voices, with your own key
Bots can also leave you voice notes: ask for the answer out loud and a bot replies with an audio message in its own voice, up to about 90 seconds. From your Chief of Staff, the note also reaches you on Telegram, Slack or Discord if you use them. The voice notes page has the details.
A note on cost, because it trips people up: a Claude or ChatGPT subscription does not cover voice. Calls use Flux Router credits or your own keys for the voice parts. Only the Mac's built-in dictation and the Mac and Windows system voices are free.
Why bother
It would be easy to see all this as decoration. In practice it does three useful things.
You know who is talking. When a request lands in your inbox, the face and name tell you which bot is asking before you read a word.
You get the right tone for the job. A personality is a cheap way to get drafts that need less editing.
Calls feel like calls. Talking to a team where each member sounds different is easier to follow than one voice doing every job.
What each one needs
- Name, title, instructions, personality and the flame mascot: free, whichever engine the bot runs on.
- Generated avatars: Flux Router or your own OpenAI image key.
- Voices and calls: Flux Router, your own voice keys, or the free system voices on Mac and Windows.
Try it
After you download Murage, open your Chief of Staff's settings, give it a personality in one line, and see how its next reply changes. Then call it.
The voice calls page covers calls in detail, and the what's new in 0.1.59 post has everything else that shipped in this release.