I finally got some good text AI working! way easier than expected, too. before i was trying to use koboldAI and silly tavern and shit and it was an absolute ballache to set up only for it to not work in the end.
but i found this thing, HammerAI, that actually just flawlessly works. i'm amazed.
https://hammerai.itch.io/hammerai-desktop

i'm sure you can do more with the aforementioned options, but this shit just works and it works well so i'm happy with it.