Personas — Separate Reading Spaces

A persona is not a tag or a filter. It is a whole reading space, and switching between two of them changes almost everything on screen.

What a persona holds

Belongs to the persona	Belongs to the account
Its sources	Your login and plan
Its folders	Your billing and credits
Its interests, muted topics and weights	Your content and AI output languages
Its Saved, Liked, read state and Not-interested history	Your API tokens and connected agents

So work and off-hours can be genuinely separate: different subscriptions, different ranking, and a Saved list that does not mix the two. What they share is the account around them — one bill, one credit allowance, one set of agent tokens.

Switch at the top of Algorithm & Agents. The persona cards are the first thing on that page, and every setting below them tunes whichever one is active.

When a second one earns its keep

Not often, and that is worth saying plainly. Most people are better served by one persona and good muted topics.

A second is worth it when the two ranking problems are genuinely different — not "work and fun", which usually rank the same way, but cases like:

• A subject you research in bursts. Sources you want at full weight for a month and silent afterwards, without retraining your main feed twice.
• A language you read separately. Different sources, different interests, and a Recommended that is not half in the wrong language.
• Someone else's setup you want to try. Installing a community persona gives you their whole space to live in for a week without touching yours.

If you would answer "the same" to what would rank differently here, you want a folder, not a persona.

Creating one

New persona on the Algorithm & Agents page. Two things to expect:

It copies your current ranking. The new persona starts from the algorithm you are using now, and forks from it the first time you edit either. It does not start from defaults.

It starts with no sources. Subscriptions belong to the persona, so a new one is empty until you add to it, import an OPML file into it, or install a pack while it is active. This surprises people, and it is the point — a reading space that inherited everything would rank the same as the one you already had.

The number you can have is a plan limit: 3 on Free, 8 on Starter, 15 on Pro, 35 on Max. Your source cap is separate and counts distinct sources across every persona at once, so following the same publication in three personas costs one source, not three.

The persona you started with is the default and cannot be deleted. Deleting any other takes its sources and folders with it — and if it was the active one, you land back on the default. There is no undo, so export it first if there is any doubt.

Export and import

Export persona downloads the active persona as a JSON file: its sources, its folders and its algorithm. It is a plain file that belongs to you and needs nothing from us to keep.

Import takes that file back — yours or someone else's — and creates a new, inactive persona from it. Your current one is untouched, and you switch to the import when you are ready. Files up to 10MB.

This is the backup route and the move-between-accounts route. It is also the honest one: an export you can read is a claim you can check.

Sharing a persona

Share persona publishes it to the community shelf, where other people can install it as a persona of their own.

You choose:

Public or unlisted. Public is listed and searchable. Unlisted is a link — anyone who has it can install, nobody browsing will find it.

Whether to include a reading-behaviour summary. Off by default. When on, the share carries per-source engagement counts — how much you read, saved and liked from each source — which lets an installer's copy rank like yours from day one instead of learning from nothing. No individual articles and no timestamps, only the per-source totals.

Two things are removed whether you ask or not:

• Private feed URLs are never shared. Paid subscriptions and newsletter inbox addresses are skipped, and the result tells you how many were left out. A share that leaked a private RSS link would hand over the subscription itself.
• Uploaded avatars are stripped from listed shares. Pick an emoji or a built-in avatar in persona settings and share again if you want an image shown.

Listed shares go through moderation before they appear publicly. Yours is installable by link in the meantime.

Installing someone else's

From Discover Sources → Personas. Installing one:

• creates a new persona with its sources and its algorithm
• leaves your current persona completely untouched
• lands inactive — switch to it at the top of Algorithm & Agents

A pack is the other thing, and it behaves differently. Installing a source pack adds its sources to the persona you are currently in, filed under a folder named after the pack. Packs are sources; personas are sources plus a ranking. If you want to try someone's setup without disturbing yours, you want a persona.

One option worth knowing: some personas carry the author's own custom prompt for AI explanations. It is stripped on install unless you tick the box beforehand, because a prompt written by someone else runs against your reading.

If something looks wrong

My Saved list emptied — you switched personas. Saved, Liked and read state belong to the persona; switch back and they are all there.

My sources disappeared — same cause. Check which persona card is active on Algorithm & Agents.

A ranking change did nothing — the settings on that page apply to the active persona. Changing them while a different one is active is a real edit to the wrong space.

I cannot create another persona — you are at the plan limit. Delete one, or upgrade; see plans.

An installed persona has fewer sources than advertised — some feeds fail on install (moved, dead, or private and therefore never shared). The result line says how many.

I cannot delete a persona — the default one cannot be deleted. Rename it instead; it holds nothing that another persona could not.