Expand a family tree into a vault of sourced person records
At a glance
Jordan Fulghum used Claude Code and autoresearch-genealogy to grow a small family tree into linked, evidence-backed Markdown records. This workflow is listed under Family History, Research, Personal Knowledge.
- Agents / tools
- Claude Code, autoresearch-genealogy, Obsidian
SourceBuilding a tool for these workflows? See weekly rates.
What they did
1) Have Claude Code available and download the autoresearch-genealogy project. Copy its vault-template folder into Obsidian or a normal Markdown folder and fill in Family_Tree.md with the relatives you already know. 2) Give Claude that starting tree and use the project's cross-reference or citation-audit prompts to establish the evidence already available. Then run a scoped tree-expansion prompt. 3) Have it research records and save one file per person, relationship links, citations, unresolved questions, conflicting accounts, and failed searches in the vault. 4) Inspect the resulting sources and weak claims before accepting new branches. Finish with a browsable Markdown collection that preserves uncertainty alongside relationships.
How it went
Fulghum reports expanding fewer than ten names into 168 people across more than 19 family lines.
Worth knowing
He warns that plausible branches can still be wrong, especially where older records are sparse or names change.
