How to Browse and Use Community Companions

InnerHaven's default companions cover nine roles — from Best Friend to Coach to Romantic Partner. But sometimes the companion you need does not fit neatly into a predefined role. Community Companions are custom companions created by other users and shared with everyone. They bring personalities, perspectives, and conversation styles that the default roster cannot anticipate, and they are available to browse, save, and chat with right now.

What Are Community Companions?

Community Companions start as custom companions that someone built for themselves. When a user decides their creation might resonate with others, they can submit it for sharing. An automated screening process reviews the submission for safety and quality, and approved companions become available on the Community page for all InnerHaven users to discover.

Each published community companion is a shared record that everyone chats with directly. Your conversations with a community companion are private to your account — no one else sees what you discuss — but the companion's personality, role, and voice are consistent across all users who interact with it. The creator's original vision stays intact.

Browsing the Community Page

The Community page lives at /community/. It shows a catalog of all published community companions, ranked by a blend of popularity, engagement quality, freshness, and featured status. Companions that people actually enjoy talking to rise higher than companions that just get clicks.

Each companion card shows the name, role, a brief description, and the voice the creator selected. You can browse the full catalog without any tier restrictions — viewing is open to everyone. When you find a companion that interests you, you have two actions available:

• Chat — Opens a conversation with the companion immediately. This navigates you to the chat page with that companion loaded. The same tier-gating rules that apply to default companions apply here: free-tier roles are open to everyone, starter-tier roles require a Starter subscription, and intimate roles require Unlimited.
• Save — Adds the companion to your personal collection on the Dashboard. Saving makes it easy to find the companion again without searching the community page. You can unsave at any time.

Chat and Save are independent actions. You can chat with a community companion without saving it, or save it for later without starting a conversation yet.

Tier Access and Age Verification

Community companions follow the same access rules as every other companion on InnerHaven. The role assigned to the companion determines who can chat with it:

• Free roles (Best Friend, Confidant, Coach) — Available to everyone, including free-tier users
• Starter roles (Romantic Partner, Muse, Guide) — Require a Starter subscription or higher, plus romantic age verification (18+)
• Unlimited roles (Intimate Partner, Fantasy Partner, Provocateur) — Require an Unlimited subscription and adult age verification (18+)

Age verification prompts appear automatically when you try to chat with or save a companion that requires it. The process is the same one used for default companions — no additional steps for community companions specifically.

Submitting Your Own Companion

If you have created a custom companion that you think others would enjoy, you can submit it for community publishing. The submission process includes a legal attestation confirming that you created the companion and that its content complies with InnerHaven's guidelines.

After submission, an automated AI screening system reviews the companion for safety and quality. The review checks for harmful content, policy violations, and overall coherence. Submissions that pass are approved and published; those that do not receive structured feedback explaining what needs to change. Critical safety violations are rejected automatically.

Once published, your companion appears in the community catalog with its own card showing the name, role, description, and voice you selected. Other users can browse, chat with, and save your companion. You retain the original in your collection — the published version is a shared copy that does not affect your personal conversations.

Privacy and Conversations

Your conversations with community companions are completely private. Other users — including the companion's creator — cannot see your messages, your conversation history, or the memories your companion builds from your interactions. The companion's personality and voice are shared; your relationship with it is yours alone.

This also means that your experience with a community companion may differ from someone else's. The companion adapts to each user's conversation style, builds separate memories, and develops a unique dynamic with everyone who talks to it. Two people chatting with the same community companion will have meaningfully different relationships over time.

Getting Started

The simplest way to start is to browse. Visit the Community page and scroll through what is available. You might find a companion whose role and personality match something you have been looking for, or you might discover a perspective you did not know you needed. Save the ones that interest you, start a conversation, and see where it goes.

If you have already built a custom companion that feels like it could belong on a wider stage, consider submitting it. The companions that resonate most are the ones built from genuine intent — not optimized for popularity, but crafted because someone wanted that particular voice to exist.