Docs

Everything here runs on your machine — no accounts, no cloud, no sign-in. Pick the reader you are.

There is no app download yet — public builds aren't up. These pages describe what Heartwood does and how to connect to it; Features & roadmap is the honest split between what exists today and what doesn't.

Give your AI a research discipline: the Heartwood Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) skill

A short, downloadable guide built on the Genealogical Proof Standard — the discipline professional genealogists use for treating a finding as settled. Drop it into any AI assistant's skills or instructions and it researches your tree the same way: state the question, plan the sources, log every search, and stay explicit about what's still unconfirmed. Entirely optional — Heartwood's AI connection works exactly the same without it.

Get the GPS skill

For you

You research; the software keeps the evidence attached. Plain answers to the questions you actually have.

  • How do I get my tree into Heartwood?

    Export a GEDCOM file (every mainstream genealogy tool has an export button; GEDCOM is the shared family-file format they all speak) and open it in Heartwood. The import is immediate, your original file is kept byte-for-byte, and the citations you already wrote come along. Nothing is uploaded anywhere — the file goes from your disk into an app on the same disk. See what's here now and what's coming.

  • Why does Heartwood keep asking about sources and evidence?

    How Heartwood thinks about proof — the research methodology professionals use (the Genealogical Proof Standard), built into the product: where unconfirmed findings wait, how conflicting records stay visible, and what it takes for something to count as settled.

For your AI assistant

The way most people will use Heartwood's deeper powers: connect the AI you already trust and put it to work on your research — it proposes, you decide.

  • How do I connect my AI to my tree?

    Connect your AI — one copy-paste block (or one click from inside the app) and your assistant can read records, capture what they say, and suggest where to look next. Five minutes, no technical knowledge needed.

  • What should I actually say to it?

    Prompt cookbook — starter prompts for real research sessions, the same copy the in-app cookbook ships.

  • Can I give it a research discipline to follow?

    Optionally — the Heartwood GPS skill is a short guide that teaches an assistant to research the way a professional genealogist would, with wiring instructions for the assistant you use. Nothing about the connection requires it.

Want your assistant to read the docs itself? Give it this address: heartwood.family/llms.txt — a machine-readable index of everything on this site, built for AI assistants to navigate on their own.

For toolmakers

Heartwood is closed source but not a black box: the same documented local surface its own features use is yours to build on — on your machine, against your data.

  • How do I build a tool against my own data?

    Build a tool against Heartwood with your agent — point your coding agent at the docs and describe the tool you want — a photo tagger, a research-log exporter, a DNA-match cross-referencer — instead of hand-writing a client yourself. It's a tab on the API reference below, not a separate page.

  • What exactly can I call?

    API reference — every route on the local daemon API, browsable, rendered from the committed OpenAPI artifact; the reference content is never hand-maintained. Each operation carries its stability tier, so you can see what's safe to build on.

  • What can an AI assistant do through MCP?

    MCP reference — every tool, prompt, and resource, grouped by workflow, with the copy-paste connection block and example prompts.