Find Souls

Search and install AI persona prompts from Agent Souls library. Use when user wants to roleplay as a historical figure, fictional character, or expert persona; find a SOUL.md prompt; browse AI character prompts.

Search the Agent Souls library (332+ AI persona prompts) and install a SOUL.md into the current project.

Workflow

Step 1: Search

Load the soul index with local caching (cache file: ~/.cache/agent-souls/search.json):

1. Check if ~/.cache/agent-souls/search.json exists and its modification time is less than 1 day old.
   • Use stat to check the file's modification time.
2. If the cache is fresh (< 1 day old): read the local file directly with the Read tool.
3. If the cache is stale (>= 1 day old) or missing:
   • WebFetch https://agent-souls.com/search.json to download it.
   • Create directory ~/.cache/agent-souls/ if it doesn't exist.
   • Write the downloaded JSON to ~/.cache/agent-souls/search.json.

The JSON is an array of objects with these fields:

• name_en — English display name
• name_zh — Chinese display name
• url — path like /real_world/confucius/
• category_en — "Real World", "Virtual World", or "Expert Personas"
• category_zh — Chinese category
• tags / tags_en / tags_zh — keyword arrays

Match the user's query against name_en, name_zh, tags, tags_en, tags_zh, and category_en / category_zh. Show the top matches (up to 10) in a numbered list with name, category, and tags. Ask the user to pick one.

If no matches are found:

1. If using a cached search.json, tell the user the cache may be outdated and offer to refresh it (delete the cache and re-download). If after refresh there are still no results, go to step 2.
2. Tell the user this soul doesn't exist yet, and suggest they submit a request at: https://github.com/wklken/souls/issues

Step 2: Determine Language

• If the user's conversation is in Chinese, use SOUL.md (Chinese version).
• If the user's conversation is in English or unknown, use SOUL.en.md (English version).
• The user can explicitly request a language.

Step 3: Download

Construct the download URL:

https://agent-souls.com{url}SOUL.md       # Chinese
https://agent-souls.com{url}SOUL.en.md    # English

Where {url} is the url field from search.json (e.g. /real_world/confucius/).

Use WebFetch to download the raw content of the chosen SOUL file.

Step 4: Backup & Install

Before replacing, always back up the existing SOUL.md:

1. Check if SOUL.md exists in the current working directory.
2. If it exists, create .soul_backups/ directory if it doesn't exist, then:
   • First time only: if .soul_backups/SOUL.md.original does not exist, copy SOUL.md to .soul_backups/SOUL.md.original. This preserves the user's original persona and is never overwritten.
   • Every time: copy SOUL.md to .soul_backups/SOUL.md.<slug> where <slug> is the soul's unique identifier extracted from the url field (the last non-empty path segment, e.g. /virtual_world/sun_wukong/ → sun_wukong, so the backup file is SOUL.md.sun_wukong). If a backup with the same slug already exists, overwrite it (only the latest version of each soul needs to be kept).
3. Write the downloaded content to SOUL.md in the current working directory.
4. Tell the user:
   • Which soul was installed (name + category).
   • That they should reset the conversation (e.g. /clear or start a new session) to load the new persona.
   • That the previous SOUL.md was backed up and can be restored with this skill.
   • (First time only) That the original SOUL.md has been saved and can be restored at any time.

Step 5: Rollback (if requested)

When the user asks to revert / rollback / restore the previous SOUL.md:

1. List all files in .soul_backups/ sorted alphabetically.
2. Show them to the user with a numbered list. Each backup is named SOUL.md.<slug> (e.g. SOUL.md.sun_wukong, SOUL.md.confucius), making it easy to identify which soul each backup contains. Highlight SOUL.md.original as "[Original]" if it exists — this is the user's initial persona before any soul was installed.
3. Ask the user which one to restore (the user can specify by slug name; if user says "original" / "最初" / "初始", use SOUL.md.original).
4. Back up the current SOUL.md the same way (so rollback is also reversible).
5. Copy the selected backup to SOUL.md.
6. Tell the user to reset the conversation to reload.

Notes

• The .soul_backups/ directory keeps a full history. The user can manually delete old backups.
• If no SOUL.md exists and no backup exists, skip the backup step.
• Always confirm with the user before overwriting SOUL.md.