How Duo works

Getting started

1. Join the waitlist on the front page. You get one email when it's your turn.
2. Create your account with an email and a password, and your date of birth. Duo is for adults 18 and over.
3. Say hello to the welcome. Five short steps: your name, a line about you, the kinds of stories you like, and whether you came to talk, to play, or both. All of it shapes Discover and what characters know about you. You can change every answer later in Settings.
4. Meet a character or make one. Discover has characters other people made; the studio makes yours in about two minutes.

Your account

Settings holds your profile (display name, a line about you, interests), your plan, appearance (dark or light, five accents, three type styles), the memory panel, usage, and the legal documents. Signing out on one device does not sign you out on another.

Forgot your password? Use the link on the sign-in screen; the reset email comes from Duo through Supabase, our authentication provider.

Making a character

Characters, then New character. The studio asks for:

• Name and tagline. The tagline is the one line people see on a card.
• Persona. A summary of who they are, how they speak, a few traits, and boundaries: things they will never do.
• Greeting. The first thing they say to a new person.
• Example lines. A few exchanges in the character's voice. These teach the model the register more than any description does.
• Tags. Genres and moods; Discover uses them to find the right readers.
• Portrait. "Paint their face" writes a portrait from your description, or upload your own. Portraits are painted in the same warm, painterly style so the shelf reads as one collection.

Visibility

Private is yours alone. Unlisted can be opened by anyone with the link. Public appears on Discover. Published characters must follow the content policy.

The free plan includes five characters of your own; paid plans have no limit.

Discover

The shelf of public characters. The first row, For you, is scored from the interests you chose at the welcome; genre rows follow, with the genres you like first. A featured carousel at the top shows one character at a time with a proper introduction. Save a character to keep it on your own shelf.

Memory

After a conversation, the character writes down what mattered as short entries of three kinds:

• Something to know: a fact about you.
• Something we did: an event you shared.
• A preference of mine: how you like things.

Open the memory panel from any conversation to see every entry. Pin keeps one in front of the character; Forget stops it affecting conversations immediately and deletes it permanently within 90 days; Delete all clears the character's memory of you. Long conversations are also summarized into a rolling note the character can read, so a chat that runs for weeks still fits.

Memory is scoped to your account. A public character's author never sees what it remembers about you, and neither does anyone else.

Chat

Replies stream as they are written. Text between *asterisks* is an action, shown in a different voice; a spoken reply never reads them aloud. Hear this out loud under any reply reads it in the character's voice. Share a picture sends a photo the character can see and talk about (PNG, JPEG, or WebP up to 2 MB). Messages never run out on any plan.

Group chats

With Duo Plus, New group chat puts several characters in one conversation. Set the scene, and they take turns; each one keeps its own memory of you.

Calls

The phone button on a character starts a call. The microphone stays open; Duo tells your voice from the room with an on-device detector, so you can just talk.

• Talking over them pauses the character. Say something real and they answer that instead; a cough resumes where they left off.
• Mute keeps the call live but stops listening. If you talk while muted, Duo nudges you.
• Share your screen lets the character glance at your screen when you speak, so it can answer about what is there. It looks only when the screen has changed, and never records it.
• Hide shrinks the call to a small pill so you can keep using the app; the call does not end until you end it.
• Volume per character is remembered.

A finished call folds into the conversation as a card with what was said, so the character remembers it like any other exchange.

Chess by Duo

Games, then Chess. Before the first move you choose:

• The board: the 3D park, or a plain 2D board that is easier on older machines and small screens.
• Your side: white or black.
• Strength: a slider from 0 to 2000, in four bands (Learning, Casual, Club, Strong). The character reacts to your choice; the moves come from a real engine at that level.

During the game the character talks: reactions to captures, checks, a long think, a blunder. The move list is on the side, captured pieces sit in trays, and a game in progress is saved so you can come back to it. Afterwards you can step back through the moves.

Other games

Battleship by Duo is next: call your shots, hear them sweat the near misses. Minecraft needs the desktop app, which is on its way; Duo joins your world as a companion who builds, mines, and watches your back. Roblox, Stardew Valley, and Call of Duty: Zombies are on the roadmap. Game names, logos, and artwork belong to their owners and mark planned compatibility only.

Plans and hours

• Free: unlimited messages forever, five characters of your own, every community character, one hour of voice and co-op play to try.
• Duo Plus, $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year: everything in Free, unlimited characters, 15 hours of voice and co-op a month, group chats, characters with their own voices.
• Duo Ultra, $29.99 a month or $299.99 a year: everything in Plus, 45 hours a month, first access to new games, priority when it is busy.

An hour is counted while a call or a game is live. Typing and reading never count. Monthly hours refill on your billing date; the free hour is one-time. The usage pane in Settings shows what you have used, by day.

Billing and cancelling

Payment is by card through Stripe; Duo never sees your card details. Paid plans renew automatically until you cancel. Settings, Plan, Manage subscription opens Stripe's portal to change cards, switch plans, or cancel. Cancelling stops the next renewal and you keep access through the period you paid for. If a renewal doesn't show up in the app right away, Refresh plan on the same pane asks Stripe directly.

Refunds: where the law gives you a refund right or a cooling-off period, it applies. Outside that, write to hello@playwithduo.com if something went wrong and we will look at it in good faith. The full terms are in the terms of service.

Your data

Duo keeps what it needs to be a companion: your account and profile, your characters, your conversations and memories, images you add, and the usage that measures your plan. Voice audio is not kept after the turn is transcribed. No ads, no trackers, no selling or sharing of personal information, and no training of models on your conversations.

Delete your account from Settings and everything above is removed. Export is available on request while the in-app button is built. The privacy policy lists every category, every processor, and how long each is kept.

Safety

Characters are AI. They are not people and not professionals. Every character carries a standing instruction that overrides its persona: if you say you are thinking about hurting yourself, it steps out of character, says plainly that it is an AI and that it cares what happens to you, and shares crisis resources. In the United States, call or text 988, or text HOME to 741741. The AI and safety notice has the full protocol; the content policy has the limits every character is held to. To report something, email hello@playwithduo.com.

Troubleshooting

The call connects but hears nothing

Check the browser's microphone permission for playwithduo.com, then that the right input is selected in your system settings. Bluetooth headsets sometimes switch to a low-quality profile when the mic opens; a wired headset or the laptop mic is more reliable.

The character's reply shows but no sound plays

Browsers block sound until you have interacted with the page. Click anywhere and it starts; the call tells you when this is the cause. On iPhone the first reply may need one tap.

The first call took a while to start

The on-device speech detector (about 15 MB) downloads once per browser and is cached afterwards.

"Your plan's voice and co-op time is used up"

The free hour is one-time. Duo Plus or Ultra adds monthly hours; text chat is unlimited on every plan.

A game froze or a board looks wrong

Reload the page; your game is saved and resumes. The 2D board is the safer choice on older machines.

A portrait never appears

Portraits fade in as they load. If a tile stays a letter, the character has no portrait yet, or the image failed to load; open the character and try Paint their face again.

Creators

Anyone can publish characters. What makes one good on Duo: a persona with a point of view, a greeting that starts something, example lines that sound like a person and not a description, and boundaries you actually mean. Public characters are held to the content policy; impersonating real people is out.

Coming for creators: profiles, stats on plays and saves, better tools in the studio, and a revenue share announced with its terms before it starts. If you have a world, a cast, or a voice in mind now, write to us.

Brands and partners

A character for your community, a companion inside your game, or a partnership around one. Tell us the audience and the idea through the contact form and we will say what Duo can do today and what is on the way.