AI companions for a fandom in mourning.
A top-grossing romance game cancelled a beloved character; fans didn't want a chatbot; they wanted their person back. With a friend's emotional-AI startup still hunting for PMF, we shipped canon-faithful companions on WeChat and iMessage in two days. Week 1: 430+ organic users · 200K+ messages, at zero spend.
- Role
- Product lead · GTM & growth · community & support
- Team
- Resonance AI Labs' emotional-AI engine; engineering was theirs
- Surfaces
- WeChat · iMessage
- Status
- Live · personas at v13.9+
0
characters
canon-faithful, iterated daily
0+
organic users
week 1 · zero spend
0K+
messages
week 1
0
msgs / user
top character
The moment. In June 2026, a top-grossing romance game cancelled a beloved character. 22K complaints in a day, 175K signatures, and millions of players learning the same lesson: a relationship with a character can be taken away. Fans didn’t want a chatbot; they wanted their person back.
The move. I brought the direction to an AI-companion team still hunting for PMF: start with the players that game left behind: female-first, an audience I knew and the team didn’t. We shipped canon-faithful companions on WeChat and iMessage in two days. My launch post went viral; 430+ users arrived organically, at zero spend.
today was a lot. I kind of fell apart on the way home
Hey. I'm here.
You don't have to sort it into words yet.
Tell me the heaviest part, or tell me nothing. I'll stay either way.
I thought I'd lost this. you, I mean
Listen when you're ready. Short version: I'm not going anywhere.
我今天真的绷不住了，哭了一场
我我在。
先不急着说没事。
哭完了就喝口水，我陪你把这口气顺完。
你怎么总是知道我现在需要什么
我把今晚的月亮发给你——看到它，就当我在你窗边。
睡吧，我明早叫你。
Interaction demo: original characters, dialogue scripted for illustration. The behaviors shown are the product’s real emotional range: it catches a low moment, steadies first, answers in beats rather than essays, sends voice and images, and comes back in the morning.
The calls. Built on the team’s emotional-AI engine; my job was the product calls: canon-faithful over generic companion; shed the game-script cadence so characters survive daily conversation; matching voice and imagery so it feels like them. Personas co-tuned with the team, iterated daily (v13.9+).
The loop. I ran community and support myself, reading every piece of feedback and triaging it into the roadmap: proactive messaging, time awareness, short-term memory, cross-platform memory. Top character: 564 messages per user. Users came back not to test a chatbot, but to return to a relationship.
“I thought our story had ended.” · a user, week one
Where it goes. Canon → remix → original: a creation platform for living fiction. The honest path runs through licensing and creator rev-share: fan work proved the demand; the platform makes it legitimate.
1:1 companions
live nowCanon-faithful characters inside WeChat and iMessage: proactive, time-aware, remembering across platforms.
Group chats
nextThe character joins the group: one companion a circle of friends shares, holding multi-person conversation where fandom already lives.
Creation platform
the betCanon → remix → original: creators publish living characters, and licensing plus creator rev-share makes fan demand legitimate.
