> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://chungushub.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Quickstart

> Connect a provider, bring your characters in, and open your first story.

This walks the shortest path from a fresh install to a story in progress. It assumes
ChungusHub is already running from [Installation](/installation).

<Steps>
  <Step title="Add a connection">
    Open **Settings → Connections** and create one. A connection is a provider, an API
    key, and a primary model, plus everything that shapes the request: sampling, context
    size, prompt post-processing, and caching.

    You can keep several connections side by side and point different parts of the app
    at different ones, so a cheap model can do the background work while your story runs
    on the good one.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Bring your characters in">
    Coming from SillyTavern, go to **Settings → Import** and point it at your profile
    folder, `data/default-user`. Pick that folder itself: the one above it is refused
    rather than searched. It reads characters and their sprites, world info, personas,
    chats and backgrounds in one pass, and reports what came across.

    Starting fresh instead, open the **Library** and create a character there. You can
    also drop in a character card and edit it afterwards.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Open a story">
    Pick a character, then the persona you are playing, and the chat opens. The first
    message and any alternate greetings arrive as swipeable openings with your persona
    substituted into them live, so switching persona reflows the greeting instead of
    stranding an old name in it.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Look at what you are actually sending">
    The composer carries a live token count for the assembled prompt, and hovering it
    breaks that number down. Open **Settings → Prompt Builder** to see the prompt as an
    ordered list of items, toggle them, reorder them, and watch each one's cost change.

    This is the part worth spending time in. Everything else in ChungusHub feeds this
    pipeline.
  </Step>
</Steps>