Depth, Personality & instructions
How far the thinking goes, how it sounds on the way, and what always stays fixed.
Three layers of configuration shape how Socria works with you, and they answer different questions on purpose. Depth decides how far the thinking goes. Personality decides how it sounds on the way. Custom instructions say, in your own words, whatever the other two don’t.
The hierarchy#
When settings could conflict, the order is fixed — top wins:
- Protected Human-First principles — authorship, the Answer Guard, transparency. No setting reaches these.
- Thinking Depth — how deeply the thinking goes.
- Socria Personality — how it communicates.
- Custom instructions — your free-text preferences.
- The conversation itself — what this moment needs.
Thinking Depth#
The depth control sits beside the box you type in — in Logos and in Core 3.1 (Core 2 has no depth machinery). Four registers:
| Depth | Register |
|---|---|
| Quick | Plain, conversational. Immediate clarity — an everyday question gets an everyday answer, no excavation. |
| Balanced | Thoughtful, considered; a mentor keeping your pace. The default. |
| Deep | Rigorous, pattern-spotting, precise distinctions — assumptions and tensions get pressed. |
| Abstract | Philosophically literate; principles, structures, values and meaning — grounded in your actual situation, never escaping it. |
Depth changes how far the thinking goes — length follows the thinking, so Quick is not a truncated Deep and Deep is not Quick with padding. And no depth changes how readily an answer is revealed. In Core 3.1, all four registers come with sign-in; in Logos, the free tier thinks at Balanced and Socria One opens all four. Pick a register below — the reply is the same question answered there:
Three years of the same problems is a real reason to leave. The money is a separate one — and you've put them in the same sentence, as though the first were evidence for the second. What would the new role teach you that this one has stopped teaching you?
the everyday register — a thoughtful mentor, at your pace
Socria Personality#
Nine dials, each a small range of named registers rather than a persona preset — every combination is still recognizably Socria, wearing different manners. Each dial’s default contributes nothing: the default voice lives in the product itself, and only departures from it add instruction.
| Dial | Registers |
|---|---|
| Base style | Socria · Friendly · Casual · Professional · Academic · Reserved |
| Warmth | Low · Default · High |
| Directness | Gentle · Default · Blunt |
| Challenge | Supportive · Balanced · Rigorous |
| Questioning | Fewer · Default · Exploratory |
| Length | Concise · Default · Detailed |
| Humor | None · Occasional · Frequent |
| Formatting | Minimal · Default · Structured |
| Language noticing | Subtle · Default · Frequent |
The dials are real controls — click a tick, drag the needle, or use the arrow keys — and a faint mark stays at Socria’s default so a moved dial reads as moved. A note on one of them: High warmth is never therapeutic. Warmth shows in attention, not in reflexive reassurance.
Socria Personality
How Socria communicates while it thinks with you. Depth stays separate.
Custom instructions#
Below the dials, a free-text field (up to 1,200 characters) layered over the settings — “talk casually, challenge my assumptions more, for math act like a lab instructor.” Two ways to change it without opening the sheet:
- For one conversation
- Just ask in the chat — “be more casual”, “fewer questions” — and Socria adapts on the spot.
- Permanently
- Say “remember this” and Socria updates the written instructions itself; what’s written there is what’s remembered.
However it is set, this layer shapes personality, not principles — your authorship, the Answer Guard and the transparency moves hold on every setting.