Honeytongue

Characters your players can actually argue with. Give a character a name, a persona, and a goal, pass in whatever the player typed, and Honeytongue tells you whether they were convinced, judged by that character's values. The same line can win over a greedy merchant and offend an honest guard. It's for any game where players type or speak to characters, and it's powered by Jev, TypeSafe's typed decision model. It works in JavaScript games: browser games (there's a Phaser example), Twine stories, and anything that runs on Node, such as a Discord bot. Spoken input works too, once your game turns speech into text: in tests, lines as speech recognition writes them got the same verdicts as typed ones, though long arguments scored a little lower (details). Engines outside JavaScript (Unity, Godot, Unreal, Ren'Py) aren't supported yet; a plain HTTP endpoint for them is on the roadmap. It has no dependencies, ships TypeScript types (TypeScript 5.9 or later), and works with import or require().

You only need three fields and one method. Everything else is optional.

Alpha, tested against live Jev. Version 0.1.0-alpha.14 has been calibrated and checked with about 10,600 live calls, whole conversations included (see the results). Defaults may still change before 0.1.0.

Quick start

You need Node 22.13 or later. In an empty folder:

npm install honeytongue

Save this as try.mjs:

import { Persuadable, createJevClient, createMockClient } from "honeytongue";

const guard = new Persuadable(
  {
    name: "Harry",
    persona: "A tired night guard who values honesty and can't stand flattery.",
    goal: "Open the gate after curfew",
  },
  // With a TypeSafe key, Jev judges. Without one, a simple offline stand-in does.
  { client: process.env.TYPESAFE_API_KEY ? createJevClient() : createMockClient() },
);

const result = await guard.attempt("Please, I'm honestly carrying medicine for a sick child inside the walls.");
console.log(result.verdict, result.score);

Then run it:

node try.mjs

It prints a verdict and a score out of 4, like unconvinced 2.84. To use Jev, get a key from TypeSafe and set it before running: export TYPESAFE_API_KEY=... on macOS and Linux, or $env:TYPESAFE_API_KEY="..." in Windows PowerShell. Never put the key in browser code.

Reading the verdict

Every attempt gets one of four verdicts: convinced, unconvinced, offended (a threat or insult), or repeated. Your game decides what happens:

if (result.verdict === "convinced") openTheGate();
else if (result.outOfPatience) callTheWatch();
else say(result.reaction ?? "Harry's hand drops to his club.");

Where next

• Documentation: writing personas, difficulty, secrets, clues, angles, patience, saving and loading, and every option, from simple to advanced.
• Designing persuasion: a practical guide to writing characters players can win over with a good argument, backed by live measurements.
• Playground: tune a character by trying lines against it, with npx honeytongue playground, or in your browser.
• Demo: four short scenes built with Honeytongue's text adventure engine, or npx honeytongue in a terminal.
• Browser games and Twine: keep your key on a small proxy that ships with Honeytongue and only judges your own characters. See Browser games.

Feedback

Issues and feedback are welcome: report a bug or share a playtest. Honeytongue is a solo project, so pull requests aren't being accepted for now. Security problems go to private reporting instead (see SECURITY.md).

License

MIT. Built on Jev by TypeSafe AI, and not affiliated with TypeSafe.