Get the recipe.
In the egg, open More → Companions → Get a recipe for your AI. Answer the short questions and copy or download the finished recipe.
The companion atelier
Hatch a little world of your own.
Fable Nest can keep any small creature—a cat, a dragon, a moss golem, your own character. Your image AI does the painting; the egg writes the recipe, checks the pieces, and brings them home.
Cook it slowly.
Paste the recipe into a fresh AI chat. Work one step at a time, approve the resting portrait, then attach it to every later image prompt.
Bring them home.
Zip the images with manifest.json and lines.json, then choose Import a companion pack. The egg explains what it found before hatching.
The recipe
The parts that matter most.
Image tools are happiest when you guide them in small, deliberate steps. Around ten images per sitting is comfortable; optional poses can wait for another session.
The anchor rule
Make idle first and stop. Regenerate until the character looks right. From then on, attach that approved image to every later prompt. This is what keeps your companion looking like themselves across the whole pack.
Keep the filenames exact.
The egg reads names such as idle, blink, happy, wistful, sleepy, and loved. Save each piece under the name supplied by the recipe.
Give them a voice.
The recipe also creates lines.json: everything your companion says, written in their own personality. This is often the moment they become themselves.
Flat colour beats fake transparency.
Use pure magenta #FF00FF behind the character—or pure green #00FF00 for a pink companion. The egg removes it automatically. Avoid captions, labels, and watermarks.
Separate the arcade pet.
Make arcade art in a fresh chat. Image tools imitate their most recent work, so a separate conversation stops the game character from borrowing your companion’s face.
Choose your depth
An afternoon—or a whole weekend.
Both are complete companions. Start with the minimum, then use the ＋ button beside their name to add or replace artwork whenever inspiration returns.
The minimum build
One cosy afternoon
Nine small files make a companion with moods, natural blinking, a home, and a voice.
| Piece | Count | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
manifest.json | 1 | Name, pronouns, stance, tagline |
idle | 1 | The only required portrait |
blink | 1 | The same pose with closed eyes |
| Core moods | 4 | happy, wistful, sleepy, loved |
lines.json | 1 | Their own words and personality |
background | 1 | Their home behind the glass |
Older five-image packs still work; the sixth still simply adds blinking.
The full build
A richly animated weekend
Up to 45 images plus two text files. Every image except idle remains optional.
| Group | Count | Slots |
|---|---|---|
| Base expressions | 6 | Idle, blink, happy, wistful, sleepy, loved |
| Extra poses | 19 | Eating, cleaning, singing, curious, walk, swim, reactions and more |
| Arcade art | 8 | Idle, run, swim, eat, cheer, pout, treat, hazard |
| Backgrounds | Up to 3 | Day, night, and evening scenes |
| Keepsakes | Up to 9 | curio1 through curio9 |
| Words | 2 | manifest.json and lines.json |
Animated WebP files play directly; PNG strips and grids are sliced into frames automatically.
Field notes
Good things to know.
Nothing here is a hurdle. These are the small tricks that make ambitious packs smoother and help you understand what the egg is doing.
Privacy, backups, and sharing
Packs stay on your device—nothing is uploaded. More → Back up everything creates one .fable file containing life, companions, voices, themes, sizes, and settings. The export arrow beside one companion makes a shareable companion-only zip.
Missing pieces and later additions
Only idle is required. Missing poses borrow the nearest expression, and missing words use a gentle neutral voice. Add or replace pieces later with the ＋ beside the companion. Re-importing is safe.
Blinking and grounded movement
blink.png should match idle in pose, scale, and placement, changing only the eyelids. The egg supplies the timing. Ground companions breathe subtly from their feet; floating companions retain a gentle waterline sway.
Animated sheets and WebP
Looping animated WebP files play as supplied. A wide PNG strip is detected by shape; a grid needs at least two rows and four frames. Put sheet in an ambiguous filename. Keep clear background gaps between poses so frames do not fuse.
Backgrounds and transparency
Scenes should be fully opaque. Transparent or translucent areas reveal the egg shell like holes in wallpaper, and the importer warns when it detects them.
Pronouns and names
Add "pronouns": "she", "he", or "they" to the manifest. Lines may use tokens such as {they}, {them}, {their}, {are}, and capitalised forms. Every resident can also be renamed without starting over.
Visitors, curios, and the wardrobe
friend.png supplies a visitor, while a manifest "friend": "Pip" gives them a name. A single curios.png grid is split into nine keepsakes. The wardrobe shows every picture; remove or replace individual pieces there.
Facing rules and safe limits
dive faces left and swim faces right. Packs may hold 128 files, a 50 MB zip, and 96 MB expanded. One image may be 24 MB, 8192 pixels on a side, and 24 megapixels—ordinary generated art is far below these limits.
The built-in residents
Leander, Mossbit, and Elsy always remain available. Every companion keeps their own care bars, bond, mood, age, and ledger. Only the resident who is awake changes; everyone else rests safely with their needs paused until you wake them again.
When an import looks wrong
The report card explains what was found, what is missing, and what falls back. Correct a filename or image and import again. If a sheet shows every frame at once, regenerate it with wider gaps between poses.
Make it yours
The companion is only half the Nest.
The shell, colour, lettering, scenery, and scale can all be tuned around whoever lives inside.
Change the whole mood.
More → Theme changes the physical shell, colours, atmosphere, and lettering. Tweak it recolours the selected theme and changes display and reading fonts.
Seat them comfortably.
More → Companions gives each resident their own A− and A+ size. A tall moth and a round lake imp can each fit the same glass beautifully.
Everything remembers.
Reset to preset restores a theme. Custom colours, sizes, and uploaded shells stay on the device and are included in Back up everything.
The shell atelier
Make the egg around them.
The Nest accepts up to five custom shells. Downloading an existing shell as a reference gives your image tool the exact proportions, screen placement, and three-button layout.
Grab a reference. In More → Theme, choose a shell and select Download this shell as a reference.
Generate your design. Attach the reference, replace [YOUR AESTHETIC] in the prompt below, and send both to your image AI.
Upload it. Choose ＋ Upload your own shell. The egg removes the magenta screen window and seats the glass and touch controls automatically.
Or edit ours. Recolour, decorate, or collage any downloaded shell. If the glass sits off-centre, make its screen window the largest transparent region.
Using the attached shell image only as a layout reference, create a new tall egg-shaped virtual-pet device in [YOUR AESTHETIC].
Keep the reference's portrait canvas proportions, centred silhouette, overall scale, screen position, and three-button layout. Show the complete device with nothing cropped.
Place one large rounded screen opening in the upper middle, centred horizontally, about 43% of the canvas width and 32% of its height, with one clean uninterrupted border. Fill that entire opening with perfectly flat PURE MAGENTA (#FF00FF): no shading, reflections, texture, character, scenery, text, or symbols inside it, and use that exact magenta nowhere else.
Put three separate small round buttons in one row below the screen and a small hanging loop at the top. Decorate the surrounding shell in [YOUR AESTHETIC], but do not add other large holes or openings.
Use a plain or transparent background outside the device. Return a portrait PNG at the reference image's exact pixel dimensions if possible.
Ready when you are
Someone small is waiting to be imagined.
Begin with one portrait. The Nest will meet you exactly where your patience and imagination happen to be today.