Basics
Coach Maker is part of the PlanCoach ecosystem. It makes coach creation available in a standalone app so anyone can contribute an idea and expand the lineup. The aim is to give more kinds of difficulty a useful specialist.
Want a complete example first? The Lu Xun walkthrough includes the character and Sanwei Study background prompts, plus the steps from creation to publication.
Why Maker?
The world has too many edge cases, and so does human psychology. In a particular situation, you may need a specialist rather than a universal expert.
Bedtime procrastination is a good example. A gentle sleep coach such as Chang’e takes a different approach from a strict coach that gives someone the push they respond to. What looks like an edge case to a developer can be somebody’s everyday life. Maker lets people create coaches for those situations.
Creator Covenant
What we discourage
- Content that violates public order, basic standards of conduct or others’ rights. Creators are responsible for their coaches; we reserve the right to remove them without abusing that power.
- Coaches that are only a joke or entertainment reference, without a useful role in helping someone act.
What we encourage
- Use your insight to make a coach that helps you or someone else with a specific difficulty.
- Turn a method that helps you into a coach.
- Give a person, character or other inspiration a useful role in your progress.
- Share your work, credit the original author when remixing, and thank creators whose coaches help you.
A coach could be inspired by an idol, relative, friend, crush, pet, yourself or anything you want alongside you while making progress.
Why share?
A creation may not find an audience immediately. But knowing that something you made helps another person can build your sense of self-worth. That can be a reason to value your own work and keep creating. Sharing is one way for the community to improve together.
Install the App
Search the App Store for Coach Maker or use the download button above.
Create a Coach
Open Coach Maker and tap + at the upper right. Fill in the coach’s information, add artwork and define its behaviour. Start with a usable version and test it before fine-tuning every option.
Audition and Choose a Voice
PlanCoach integrates voices from Volcengine. A voice helps establish the coach’s personality.
- Open the Volcengine text-to-speech page.
- Find its online synthesis experience area and browse voice categories.
- Try wording that fits your coach and listen to the result.
- Record the voice’s name—for example, Cancan—and select the matching voice in Maker.
The provider’s website is in Chinese.
Prompt Techniques
Use what the model already knows
For a well-known character such as Lu Xun, a short role description can call on information already present in the model’s training. A less familiar or original character needs more explicit personality and behaviour instructions.
Refer to PlanCoach’s output fields
| Term | What it represents | Example instruction |
|---|---|---|
| user | The person carrying out the task | Help the user take the first step. |
opening_statement | The coach’s opening dialogue bubble | Keep opening_statement encouraging rather than harsh. |
step | A step’s title | Keep each step title short. |
emoji | The icon for a step | Avoid repeating emoji values. |
hint | A step’s hint | Put the hint in parentheses. |
suggestion | An extra suggestion | Include a quotation in suggestion. |
celebrative_words | The closing celebration | Congratulate the user in celebrative_words. |
Parentheses
Text in parentheses is omitted when the coach reads aloud, including Hands-Free Mode. Use that for on-screen notes you do not want spoken.
Leave room and test
Too much instruction can dilute what matters. Write the personality’s most important constraints, leave room for the model to work and test repeatedly.
Export and Test
Tap Export to share the coach package or use it yourself. Choose PlanCoach in the share sheet to import it directly.
Expect to test at least three times, and often more than ten, across different tasks. A result depends on the model as well as your prompt.
Share a Connection Code
Maker can generate a short, memorable Connection Code. Other users enter it to install the coach in PlanCoach.
Snapshot principle
A published code refers to a snapshot of the coach. That snapshot cannot be edited in place. Publishing changes creates another snapshot rather than changing what someone else’s shared code points to.
Think of it like sharing a sticker: someone recommending your work should not find that the same reference now downloads an unexpectedly different version.
Expiration
Codes have an expiry date and cannot be downloaded afterwards. This keeps storage bounded and gives shared content a limited lifetime. A coach you made of yourself for one audience need not remain downloadable forever by every future audience.
Advanced Techniques
Remix another coach
You may like a character’s appearance but want a different personality, or like its prompt but prefer different artwork. Maker’s terms allow published coaches to be improved and remixed, including your own work by others.
- Choose Import Coach in Maker.
- Enter its Connection Code and download it locally.
- Edit and republish using the normal process.
Credit the original creator in the description when sharing a remix. That helps make the community a place where good original work is recognized.
Image Generation Tutorial
The original example uses Nano Banana Pro and a three-state sprite sheet:
A pixel art sprite sheet of a handsome male, fancy and charming, wearing a suit.
Age: 22. Profession: basketball player. Style: Stardew Valley.
Palette: strictly 16 colours. Background: solid magenta (#FF00FF).
CHARACTER DESIGN
- Reference: [reference image or well-known character]
- Side/game view, full body, looking towards the camera. No cropping.
- Do not add any text.
LAYOUT
- Canvas: 120 pixels wide × 80 pixels high.
- One row and three columns; each sprite fits in a 40 × 80 pixel cell.
- Every sprite faces right (east).
STATES
- Stand.Idle: idle stance.
- Stand.Reading: the same stance, reading a paper note.
- Stand.Celebrating: the same stance, smiling and giving a thumbs up.Try several generations and revise the prompt if the results do not fit. The original walkthrough typically chose a usable result after three to five attempts.
Prepare the result
- Open it in Photoshop or GIMP.
- Remove the magenta background used in this example.
- Disable interpolation when scaling pixel art down, and find a size that keeps the pixels orderly.
- Crop the three states into separate images.
Give the character something memorable
A reference image usually gives a clearer starting point than an entirely verbal request. Look for an action that belongs to the character: the Sorcerer tips his hat rather than giving a thumbs up, while the cooking coach holds a sign.
The Lu Xun tutorial provides another complete set of character and background prompts.