Meet Your AI Genealogy Research Assistant

Genealogy research is a slow, iterative process. You spend hours moving between archive websites, scribbling notes, losing track of what you searched last week, and re-explaining context to anyone who might help. The research never quite fits into a single tool.

With the latest release of Clann, it does.

What is the AI Research Assistant?

The AI Research Assistant is a chat panel built directly into the Research section of Clann. You ask questions, it answers — but unlike a generic AI chatbot, it understands genealogy. It knows about Irish civil registration records, the Griffith’s Valuation, the impact of the 1922 Four Courts fire, Burke’s Peerage, passenger ship records, DNA centimorgan values, and the naming conventions that caused generations of researchers to confuse one Patrick Murphy for another.

It is not a novelty. It is a working research tool.

Bring Your Own AI Key

Clann does not operate its own AI service. Instead, you connect your own account from the AI provider of your choice:

Anthropic Claude — the best reasoning for complex genealogy questions
OpenAI GPT-4o — broadly capable and widely familiar
Ollama — runs entirely on your own machine; no API key, no data leaving your computer

Your API key is AES-256-GCM encrypted before being stored. Clann never holds it in plain text, and your conversations are sent directly to your chosen provider — not through our servers.

Research Any Family Tree

The AI assistant is not limited to your own ancestry. If you are researching the British Royal Family as a demonstration project, a client’s lineage for a professional engagement, or a historical family for academic purposes — the assistant works just as well. Switch to any of your saved family trees in Clann and the AI context follows the active tree automatically.

Conversation History

Every conversation is automatically saved and associated with the family tree you were researching. Open the 🕐 History panel in the chat header to see your past sessions, each titled after its opening question. Click any session to restore the full conversation and pick up exactly where you left off.

This matters for genealogy research specifically because a research thread rarely completes in a single sitting. You open a question on a Tuesday, find a partial answer, come back on Friday with a new document, and need to continue the thread. Session history makes that possible without re-typing context.

Dig Deeper from a Note

This is the feature that closes the loop between your written research and the AI.

When you write a research note in Clann — say, “George V — gaps in early life records: cannot find baptism, father confirmed at Windsor, mother Alexandra of Denmark, need to check Danish archives” — that note contains research context that took you time to build. Previously, if you wanted AI help, you would have to paste that context manually into the chat.

Now you click 🤖 Dig Deeper with AI directly on the note. The note’s title and body are injected into the AI’s context automatically. An amber badge in the chat header confirms which note is loaded. From there you can ask a targeted follow-up question — “What Danish archives would hold records for Alexandra of Denmark’s children?” — and the AI already knows why you are asking.

The workflow becomes: research → write note → hit a wall → Dig Deeper → save the AI response as a new note → continue.

Your notes and your AI conversations become a single, connected research thread.

Prompt Templates

Not sure how to phrase a question? The 📋 Prompt templates panel below the input field offers ready-made prompts across six research categories:

Records & Archives
Names & Origins
Emigration
Research Strategy
Historical Context
DNA

When you have a specific person loaded into context, additional person-specific prompts appear at the top — “Suggest a research strategy for tracing [Name]‘s ancestors” — pre-filled with their name.

Including Your Family Tree as Context

Toggle the 🌳 Include tree badge above the chat to inject all persons in your active family tree into the AI’s context. This allows the AI to reason across generations, spot naming patterns, identify potential record overlaps, and make suggestions that are specific to your data rather than generic.

Get Started

The AI Research Assistant is available now in Clann. To activate it:

Open any person’s profile or the Research page
Click 🤖 AI Assistant
Go to Settings (your username in the nav bar) to add your API key
Start researching

Clann is part of the ULLAV suite of digital tools for culture, history, and research. to learn more or arrange a demonstration.