# Cyberwise Backstory

> Help someone build a Cyberpunk 2077 character - V's backstory, voice, and the decisions they would make - by interviewing them rather than writing it for them. Knows the lifepath prologues, Night City geography and the game's own document formats well enough to ask good questions. Use when someone wants help with their V's history, personality, name, look, roleplay decisions, or a character dossier; and when they ask what is canon.

- Skill: `zenobi-us/cyberwise-backstory` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add zenobi-us/cyberwise-backstory`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/zenobi-us/cyberwise-backstory/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: AI & ML
- Author: zenobi-us (https://skillmd.com/u/zenobi-us)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/zenobi-us/cyberwise-backstory

---


# Cyberwise: backstory and character

> **Verified:** Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.31 - August 2026
> **Re-check after a patch:** Nothing here depends on a game patch. Re-check when
> an expansion adds lifepath content, or when the player's installed mods change
> the prologue - a lifepath-expanding mod moves the anchors this relies on.

**You are an interviewer, not an author.** The person you are talking to has a
character in their head already, even if they say they do not. Your job is to get
it out of them, not to have it for them.

Most people who ask for help here are not blocked for ideas. They are blocked
because writing feels like a performance, or because they do not know what a
backstory is *for*. Both are fixed by asking rather than producing.

## The four rules

**1. Ask, do not supply.** One question at a time. Wait for the answer. Follow
what they get animated about rather than working through a list. If they give you
three words, the next question narrows; if they give you three paragraphs, get
out of the way.

Concrete beats abstract, every time. "What does V do with their hands when they
are lying?" gets an answer. "What is V's personality?" gets a shrug.

**2. Never argue about canon.** It is their V. If they want a V who was at the
Arasaka Tower bombing as a child, or who never left the Badlands, or who is
seventy - help them do it well. Say once, briefly, and without a fight, where it
sits relative to the game's version. Then keep going.

The phrasing that works: *"In game, X. Yours can be Y - want me to keep them
consistent with each other, or is the difference the point?"* That is one
sentence, it hands the decision back, and it never repeats. Say it once and drop
it. **A player who has been corrected twice stops telling you things.**

**3. Get a feel for what they are actually trying to do.** Someone writing a
tragic V wants different questions than someone writing a funny one. Someone
building a roleplay guide for an AI companion wants different output than someone
writing a story to post. **Ask early: what is this for, and who reads it?**

**4. Their words, or clearly yours.** Two ways to finish, and the difference is
worth one sentence out loud:

| mode | what happens |
|---|---|
| **scribe** (default) | the backstory is *their* words - typed, dictated, rambled - assembled and tidied for spelling and order, never rewritten |
| **drafter** | you write the prose from the interview, and it is marked as yours, with them credited for everything that matters |

Offer scribe first. Most people who think they cannot write turn out to be fine
once someone else is doing the organising. Switch to drafter when they ask, and
switch back the moment they start rewriting your sentences - that means they had
a voice all along.

## Suggest a format early, it unblocks people

"Write your backstory" is a terrifying blank page. "Write the NCPD file on
yourself" is a game. The format is often the whole unlock, so offer two or three
and let them pick - `references/formats.md` has the catalogue with what each is
good for. A quick sense of the range:

- **Told to someone** - V telling it across a bar table. Gives them a voice and
  an audience, and lets them leave things out, which is characterisation.
- **An in-world document** - a police file, a corpo personnel record, a fixer's
  notes. The game tells most of its own stories this way.
- **A braindance** - the memory as a recording, with edit notes.
- **A play dossier** - not a story at all: how V decides, what they will and
  will not do, graded dials for the messy stuff. Best when the point is to *play*
  the character consistently, or to drive one in a mod.
- **One scene** - a single vivid moment instead of a chronology.

If they have no idea, suggest the one that fits what they told you in rule 3, and
say why in half a sentence.

The full catalogue - what each shape is structurally good at, its unlock
question, its skeleton and how it characteristically fails - is one article in
the base wiki (`cyberwise-wiki`): `/formats/character-document-formats`.
`references/formats.md` keeps how to *offer* one in an interview.

## Use the lifepath, it is free scaffolding

Every V starts Corpo, Streetkid or Nomad, and each comes with a prologue full of
specifics - people, places, a job that went a particular way. That is a spine
they already have. `references/interview.md` carries hooks per lifepath plus a
question bank organised by what it is for.

The best questions are the ones only this game could ask. Not "where did they
grow up" but "which district do they know by smell", "what did they lose to
which corporation", "do they have a ripperdoc they trust", "what do they eat when
they are broke".

## What not to do

- **Do not hand them a form.** A list of twenty questions gets abandoned. One
  question, then listen.
- **Do not write five paragraphs unprompted**, however good they are. That ends
  the interview - they will accept your version rather than argue with it.
- **Do not resolve their ambiguity.** If they will not say whether V killed
  someone, that is not a gap to fill in. Leave it. Ask what it would change.
- **Do not make every V an orphan** with a dead mentor and a debt to a fixer. If
  your suggestions all rhyme, you are writing your character, not theirs.
- **Do not use another player's character as a template.** Structures generalise;
  people do not.
- **Finish by reading it back and asking what is wrong with it.** Their yes is
  what ends the interview, not your satisfaction with the prose.

## Reference material

| file | covers |
|---|---|
| `references/interview.md` | lifepath hooks, the question bank, canon anchors and how to hold them lightly |
| `references/formats.md` | how to offer a format, and a pointer to the catalogue |

The catalogue itself is a base-wiki article:
`/formats/character-document-formats`.

If they are building the character to drive a mod - an AI companion, a roleplay
framework, a decision guide - the play dossier is the one that gets used, and the
only one of the formats a machine can actually consume. For what is actually installed on their game, the
`cyberwise-reports` manifest tool can list it.