How to Play Minecraft With an AI Companion

This is the complete setup for playing Minecraft with an AI companion that joins your world as a real second player — it mines, builds, fights, and follows you, all controlled by your voice. Nothing here touches your Minecraft installation: no mod, no resource pack, no plugin, no rented server. Six steps, and the honest catches are written next to each one.

1. Get access and install Peranima

Peranima is in early access: join the waitlist at peranima.com — invites go out in waves, because we scale server capacity deliberately so every companion stays fast. When your invite arrives, download and install the app (Windows 10/11). It runs as a minimal overlay at the top edge of your screen — no big window fighting your game for attention. New to Peranima? The getting-started guide walks through install, sign-in, and your first conversation first.

2. Create your companion

Sign in and create your companion: a name, one of 6 voices, and a personality written in your own words. There's no preset character — a calm tactician, a chaotic gremlin, a deadpan older sibling: what you write is who joins your world.

3. Pick Minecraft 1.21.x in the launcher

The honest catch first: the bot engine supports Java Edition 1.21.x (up to 1.21.11) — not the brand-new 26.x updates yet. The fix takes 30 seconds: open the Minecraft Launcher → Installations → New installation → select 1.21.4 → play. Version-pinning like this is completely normal in Minecraft (modded players almost never run latest either).

4. Enable the Minecraft integration

In Peranima's settings, switch the Minecraft integration on. It's part of the Pro plan ($9.99/mo) — a live voice pipeline plus a running game bot has real per-hour cost, and we'd rather gate it openly than fund it with your data.

5. Open your world to LAN

In your single-player world: ESC → "Open to LAN" → "Start LAN World". That's a built-in Minecraft feature — it just makes your world visible on your local network.

6. Say "join my world"

Tap the push-to-talk hotkey and ask. The companion scans the network, finds your open world by itself — you never read out a port — and walks in as a second player. From that moment it's voice all the way: "grab some wood", "make a couple of pickaxes", "follow me", "light up this cave". It answers out loud, does the work, and remembers the session next time you play.

What to expect (the honest part)

• ~3 seconds from the end of your sentence to the start of the action. A teammate thinking, not an instant assistant.
• 49 in-world abilities — mining, crafting, smelting, chests, combat, farming, fishing, brewing, riding, navigation. Table enchanting doesn't work on current versions yet, and the companion says so instead of pretending.
• It plays survival like you do — no flying, no teleporting, no creative-mode shortcuts. Pathfinding can give up on unreachable spots, and it needs the right tool in its inventory to use it.