Wow, thank you! That's going to take a day or two to take apart and understand what it's doing. I very much appreciate the time you put into that answer.

Thanks for responding, I appreciate it. Long time programmer, literally first time interacting with any ai outside of a voice mail system.
Okay, I had that much right so thanks for confirming.
Here’s where I’m getting stuck: at this point, I’ve set up a very simple scene where Anon, Jim, and Bob are seated at a table in a diner. Jim and Bob’s character descriptions both include liking knock knock jokes.

I’m in a chat with Bob#1 and I add Jim#2 just as described.

I want to tell Jim a knock knock joke.
If I just feed “Knock knock” into the prompt, Bob answers “who’s there”. No surprise there, it's a chat with Bob.

How do I tell Jim the joke?
If I feed
/ai @Jim#2 “Knock knock”
into the prompt, I have instructed the ai to have Jim say “Knock knock” and the ai fleshes out a response that does just that.

How do I say “knock knock” and have Jim answer with “Who’s there?” without explicitly having the ai make Jim say “Who’s there”?

What I have been doing is this:

/ai @Jim#2 I say “Knock knock” to Jim

and this works, Jim responds with “Who’s there”.

Is that the best way to do it or am I overlooking better syntax? Thanks very much for the help!