If you're leaving Janitor AI because the bot keeps forgetting, the alternative you need depends on what you want to end up with. For more roleplay with a bigger memory, SillyTavern (free, runs on your machine) or DreamGen (paid plans up to a 30,000-token window) are the usual moves. For a story you can actually reread, export and finish, you want a writing app that keeps a story bible. KudoWrite does that with its own built-in AI, so there's no proxy or key to set up.
Below, the tools a roleplayer would actually switch to, compared on the two things that decide whether a long story holds together: how much the AI can remember, and whether you keep a manuscript or a chat log.
Why Janitor AI forgets your story
Janitor's own help centre is plain about it. Its free model, JLLM, has "around 8k-9k tokens, give or take" of context, and when that fills up, "stuff gets pushed out of memory or starts degrading" (Chat Memory & Context Management, updated 11 August 2026). That's a few thousand words of character card, persona, memory and recent messages, all sharing one window.
The help centre's own advice is good roleplay practice: keep Chat Memory to "post-it notes, not a giant wiki", list facts rather than scenes, and ask the bot for a recap every so often to use as the new memory. That's you, by hand, doing the job of a story summary.
The other way out is a proxy: Janitor lets you plug in a bigger model through an API key. Its quickstart walks you through making an OpenRouter key and pasting https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions into the proxy settings (TLDR Quickstart Proxy Instructions). On OpenRouter, DeepSeek V4 Flash has a context window of 1,048,576 tokens (OpenRouter models API, checked 26 October 2026). So the window stops being the problem. The chat format doesn't.
Janitor AI alternatives compared
| Tool | What it is | How much it remembers (vendor's own figure) | Explicit content | Price (checked 26 Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Janitor AI | Character roleplay chat | JLLM: about 8k–9k tokens; a proxy model: that model's window | Allowed on the web; off by default in the mobile app (NSFW FAQ, updated 27 June 2026) | JLLM free; proxy models at the provider's price |
| SillyTavern | A "locally installed user interface" for chatting with models (docs) | Whatever the model you connect allows | No filter mentioned in its docs; the model's own rules apply | Free, open source (AGPL-3.0); you pay the model |
| DreamGen | Roleplay and story generation | 5,000 / 15,000 / 30,000 tokens by plan (pricing) | Not stated on its pricing page | Starter $7.83, Advanced $19.35, Pro $48.30 a month |
| NovelAI | Story writing with a Lorebook | Up to 28,672 tokens on the top tier (subscription docs) | Not stated on the pages we read | $10, $15 or $25 a month |
| KudoWrite | A book written in beats, with a story bible and a running summary of the whole book | The whole book's summary, plus the bible entries each beat needs | No filter of its own; the model's behaviour still applies | 1 free credit, then packs from $3.50 for 100 credits; built-in AI, no key needed |
Checked October 2026: prices and windows were read on each vendor's own page on 26 October 2026. DreamGen's pricing page showed first-month discounts at the time; the table gives the regular monthly price. Character.AI isn't in the table: its guidelines page didn't load for us without JavaScript, so we can't quote its current adult-content rules.
Your OpenRouter key works outside Janitor too
If you followed Janitor's proxy guide, you already have the hardest part: an OpenRouter account and a key. That key isn't tied to Janitor. SillyTavern's docs connect to OpenRouter with the same key, or with an "Authorize" button that makes one (SillyTavern OpenRouter docs). KudoWrite doesn't need it: its AI is built in.
Two things from Janitor's OpenRouter error guide hold wherever you take the key:
The free limit is OpenRouter's, not Janitor's. A 429 free-models-per-day error means the daily cap on free models, which resets at midnight UTC. Janitor's quickstart puts it at 50 free messages a day, or 1,000 a day after a one-time $10 top-up. Our OpenRouter explainer has the current rules.
Model IDs go stale. Janitor's quickstart still uses deepseek/deepseek-chat-v3-0324:free as its example. On 26 October 2026 that :free ID was no longer in OpenRouter's model list, though the paid deepseek-chat-v3-0324 was. Copy the ID from OpenRouter's model page, not from a guide.
If a model keeps refusing the scene, that's the model, not the app. The uncensored models guide lists the ones fiction writers use on OpenRouter.
Roleplay vs a story you keep
A roleplay chat is written for the moment. You play one character, the bot plays the rest, and the text is a log of turns: your lines, its lines, the swipes you rejected. It's a great way to find a story. It's a hard way to keep one: there's no chapter, no revision, and the memory is whatever you remembered to write in the box.
A writing app turns that around. You write the story's events as the narrator, and the tool's job is to remember the book for you. If the bot you loved was a werewolf or an orc, how to write monster romance has the line platforms draw for a hero who isn't human.
If you've got a roleplay worth turning into a book, treat your best chat as a first draft: copy the turns that matter, write each one as a two-line beat in the narrator's voice, and let Expand make prose of it. The character card's list of looks becomes one detail at a time, seen by someone: describing a woman's body in writing and a man's body from the female gaze show how. A kink the chat ran on needs its ask, terms and aftercare on the page, and the kinks list for romance writers gives each one's beats.
Why the AI loses the thread in a long story, and the manual fixes that work in any tool, are in AI forgets my story.
Where each alternative falls short
SillyTavern: you install and run it yourself, and it's still a chat. It's the best upgrade for roleplay; it's not a manuscript.
DreamGen: the bigger windows cost money, and the 30,000-token one is on the $48.30 plan. Its pricing page doesn't say how it handles explicit content, so check before you subscribe.
NovelAI: a story tool rather than a chat, with a Lorebook you keep current by hand. 28,672 tokens is generous, but it's the recent chapters, not the whole book.
Staying on Janitor: if what you love is playing a character live, a writing app won't give you that. Keep the roleplay, and use the recap-as-memory trick from Janitor's own help centre.
From chat log to book in KudoWrite
Janitor's help centre has you keep Chat Memory as post-it notes and paste in the bot's recaps. In KudoWrite that bookkeeping is the app's: the story bible (characters, places, items, events) and a summary of the whole book keep up as you write, and you can read and correct both in the sidebar. You stop rationing a window.
Copy the log worth keeping into a .txt, .md or .docx file and import it: detecting its chapters and scene breaks costs nothing. It runs on the built-in KudoAI, with no key or proxy: one free credit once your email is confirmed, then packs from $3.50 for 100 credits. Nothing of KudoWrite's own filters the story, within the law; the model's behaviour still applies. Pick the chat you'd most like to reread in six months, start a book, and write its first scene as three beats.