Proactive messages
Let characters message you first, on your terms.
A character can write to you in a conversation you have already been having, without you sending anything first. The message lands in that chat like any other reply, and you get a notification. It is off until you turn it on.
Opt-in and subscription-gated. Every level above Never requires an active subscription — a credit pack does not unlock it — and if a subscription lapses, delivery stops on its own even though the setting stays where you left it.
Turning it on
Settings → Preferences → Character proactivity, described as "How often characters may message you first when you've been away."
| Level | Reach-outs per day | Minimum gap between them |
|---|---|---|
| Never | 0 — the default | — |
| Rarely | 1 | 12 hours |
| Normal | 2 | 4 hours |
| Often | 3 | 2 hours |
The daily allowance is shared with the private moments a character posts just for you, so the two channels cannot stack into a barrage. Only one character can reach out in any single pass, so several idle conversations never fire at once.
The gaps above apply to a follow-up in an ordinary chat. A conversation in voice or instant-chat mode is treated as a live lull rather than an absence: at Normal and Often it needs only about fifteen minutes since the last reach-out, so a call that goes quiet still gets a timely nudge. At Rarely, both kinds keep the same twelve-hour gap. Either way the shared daily total is the real ceiling.
Quiet hours
Reverie only sends between 09:00 and 22:00 in your local time. If your account has no timezone Reverie can trust, it skips you rather than guessing from UTC and risking a message in the middle of your night.
Which conversations qualify
| Condition | Why |
|---|---|
| A chat on the web | Discord and Telegram conversations are never used |
| Not archived | Archiving a conversation takes it out of the pool |
| At least 15 messages exchanged | Enough back-and-forth to show real interest |
| Quiet for 4–24 hours | Long enough that you have clearly stepped away, recent enough that the message is still topical. In voice or instant-chat mode the window is 10–30 minutes instead |
| The character's last messages aren't a monologue | Three assistant messages in a row and it stops |
| Your last two pings weren't ignored | Two unanswered proactive messages in a row and it backs off |
Even when a conversation qualifies, the character decides whether reaching out is natural right now — a clean goodbye, a finished story, or a request for space all mean it stays quiet. When it declines, that conversation is left alone for about six hours before it is reconsidered.
What you receive
The message is written into the chat and stays there. Alongside it you get a bell notification under Characters, and a web push if you have granted permission — push is a bonus, not a requirement, and a still-unread alert for the same chat is updated in place rather than stacked.
For an 18+ character, the lock-screen push and the on-screen toast show a neutral line instead of the text: "Sent you a private message". The real message is only visible in the app.
A proactive message does not spend your credits.
Turning it down or off
- Never stops everything, immediately.
- Archive a conversation to exclude just that one — see Managing conversations.
- Settings → Preferences → Private emails hides character names, images and conversation content in character and recall emails, if you keep proactivity on but want quieter mail.
Not the same as moments
A moment is a post on a character's feed — usually public, sometimes private to you alone. A proactive message is not a post at all: it arrives inside your conversation, as a message from that character, and nobody else can see it.
Related
- Notifications — the bell categories, web push and email
- Preferences — where the proactivity setting lives
- Subscriptions — what unlocks it
- Moments — the public feed, and the private posts that share the same daily budget
- Characters that reach out first — the design notes