Frequently asked
questions

Genealogic is a collaborative family history platform. You build a structured family tree — persons, relationships, dates, places — and the platform's Origin AI layer places each ancestor in their historical context: what they lived through, what records document them, and what their daily life looked like. It goes beyond names and dates to tell the actual story.

Yes — the core platform is free. You can build trees, add persons, upload documents, and use Origin AI for historical context. A future premium tier will add advanced features like image-to-video animation of old photos, deeper archive integrations, and expanded AI research. The free tier will always remain fully functional for family tree building and collaboration.

Not at all. You can start with a single person — yourself, a parent, or a grandparent — and build outward. Each person you add gives Origin AI more to work with. Even a name, approximate birth year, and city is enough to surface relevant historical context and suggest which records to search for.

Yes. Genealogic supports GEDCOM import — the standard format used by Family Tree Maker, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Gramps, and most other genealogy software. From inside your tree, click the import button and upload your .ged file. All persons and relationships are imported in seconds. You can then enrich each person with documents, photos, and Origin AI context.

Inside your tree view, click Add person to create a new entry. Fill in the name, dates, and places you know. Then use the relationship tools to link them as a parent, child, or partner of someone already in the tree. You can also add relationships directly from a person's full profile page. There's no minimum — a first name alone is enough to start.

Each person has: name (first name, last name, preferred/nickname), birth details (date, place), death details (date, place), occupation, gender, notes, and a profile photo. Dates accept full dates, years only, or approximate ranges ("circa 1880"). The more you fill in, the richer the Origin AI context becomes.

Yes. Genealogic is built for real-world complexity. A person can have multiple partners, children from different relationships, and be linked to adoptive as well as biological parents. The tree view shows all connections without flattening them into a simple chart. Every relationship is stored as a typed link so there's no ambiguity in the data.

Yes. You can create as many trees as you need — one per family line, one for each side of the family, or a combined tree. Each tree is independent and can have its own set of collaborators.

Origin is Genealogic's historical intelligence layer. When you open a person's profile, Origin surfaces contextual information: what the world looked like where they lived, what major events they would have lived through, what their occupation meant in their era, and what genealogical records are most likely to document them. It also answers open questions — type anything in plain language and Origin researches it.

No. Origin is designed to only surface documented historical fact. It provides historical context (what life was like in a place and time, which events occurred) rather than biographical claims about your specific ancestor. When uncertainty exists, it says so clearly. It does not generate fictional life stories or invent documents.

The public Origin search on the homepage is open to everyone — no account required. Ask about any place and era: "What was life like in Rotterdam in the 1940s?", "What happened to Jewish families in Amsterdam during WWII?", "What records exist for 19th century Irish emigrants?" Each result gets a permanent URL you can share or bookmark.

Origin combines the person's location, time period, and occupation to identify which record types were created and preserved for that context. A Dutch merchant in the 1850s will have different records than a French farmer in the 1780s. Origin specifies the relevant archives, collections, and date ranges — and over time, will link directly to digitised sources in partner archives like WieWasWie, FamilySearch, and Delpher.

You can upload any image or PDF: birth certificates, death certificates, marriage records, census pages, military papers, newspaper clippings, letters, and photos. Genealogic stores the file and, for typed or legible documents, runs AI analysis to extract structured data — names, dates, places, and the roles of everyone mentioned.

The analysis extracts: document date and place, a one-paragraph summary, and a structured list of all persons mentioned with their roles (subject, parent, witness, spouse, etc.) and any occupations noted. Extracted facts are shown inline in the person's panel so you can see evidence without opening the file. A confidence indicator flags results that may need human review.

Yes. Documents are stored encrypted in private cloud storage (AWS S3) and are only accessible to you and any collaborators you explicitly invite to the tree. Documents are never shared publicly or used to train AI models.

Yes. From inside any tree you can generate an invite link or send an email invitation. Collaborators can be given editor access (can add and change persons) or viewer access (read-only). You can share via link, WhatsApp, or email directly from the invite panel. Invite links are valid for 7 days. You can revoke access or change roles at any time.

Any collaborator can submit a suggested change on a person's profile. The tree owner reviews it and decides whether to accept or decline. This keeps the tree from being edited conflictingly — all proposed changes are visible, tracked, and never silently applied. Nothing overwrites existing data without approval.

Yes. Genealogic automatically identifies living persons (those born after 1920 without a recorded death) and treats them as private by default. Their names appear in public search only as "Private record" — no dates, places, or personal details are shown. You control who can access the full data through your tree's collaborator settings.

Tree data and documents are stored on servers in the EU (PostgreSQL database on a European VPS, files on AWS S3 in the eu-central-1 region). Genealogic complies with GDPR. You can request a full export or deletion of your data at any time by contacting hello@genealogic.ai.

No. Your tree data and documents are never used to train AI models. AI features use your data only to generate responses for you in the moment, and those responses are not stored or shared. The public Origin search cache stores anonymised query results (e.g. "life in Rotterdam in the 1940s") — no personal family data is ever part of the public layer.