The Mobile Genealogist: Creating source-based ancestor biographies with AI

I've always been a multi-tasker and I love having a tiny computer (aka iPhone) with me at all times. If I'm waiting anywhere, in an airport, in line at the bank, or even getting an oil change, I will use my phone to learn more about my ancestors using FamilySearch and AI. Here is my method and opinions on the two AI apps I primarily use. 

Recently, I compiled two AI biographies on my ancestor, Adam Weaver, using both Claude Fable/Sonnet 5 and ChatGPT Plus. I have already used both FamilySearch Full Text AI and Simple Search to fill in Adam Weaver's FamilySearch Sources page as much as I could. This isn't going to work if there aren't many sources listed for the ancestors so try this out on one who has several sources listed. Adam Weaver has 26 sources and I attached all 26 thanks to Full Text and Simple Search.

Step 1: Open FamilySearch and navigate to the ancestor you wish to create a bio for and click "Sources". Starting with the first source, click the hyperlink under the heading "Web Page". 

Step 2: A photo of the document will pop up. Click the "Download" icon and then the radio button by "JPG" only. 

The photo should download to your phone's camera roll.

Step 3: Click the icon in the upper right corner, it is an "i" in a circle for "information" and then scroll down and click the "copy" icon on the right of the Citation". A box will pop up confirming that the Citation has been added to the clipboard.

 

Step 4: Open the AI app you wish to use - I can only comment on ChatGPT Plus and Claude as those are the only ones I have used, and then add the downloaded record and ask it to transcribe the information for a biography on (ancestor name) and paste in the record source for the bibliography. Repeat for each source.

 

 AI apps will do different things for the biography: ChatGPT Plus will go in search of other sources. Claude Fable 5 will analyze the and sometimes interpret the 18th century lingo. Both do a fairly adept job at transcribing. I do still proofread as recommended by the Coalition for Responsible AI in Genealogy.

Caveat - remember to watch your usage when using Claude. High-powered models like Fable 5 and Opus use more tokens up than lower powered models like Sonnet. I toggle back and forth between Fable and Sonnet depending on the task. There are tips for saving your usage, and I have not yet hit any usage limits with ChatGPT Plus. Also, Claude has a 100 image per chat limit so check how many images you have before starting. Both my ChatGPT and Claude now have memory enabled so they can "remember" past chats and I have grouped my Weaver family chats into "Groups" and "Projects". The AI apps will notice things you might have missed. If you discover any useful tips related to this method, feel free to share in the comments section.  

 

STOP DUCT-TAPING YOUR ANCESTRY TREE!!! AI can help you, I'll show you how

I waver between anger and despair when looking at other people's scantily-sourced Ancestry.com trees. I probably should not look at trees that appear in hints because I find it about as gloomy as watching the news. I think some genealogy newbies see a source and just click it without even looking at it; like it's a matching game. Until it isn't. Like, HELLO BOLT DESCENDANTS - Elizabeth's last name is NOT "Brownlie" - check the records! That's a 120 year piece of duct-tape you are using to say that Elizabeth WEAVER who was born in 1722 was having a baby in 1840's Scotland! Grrrr....

Zach Weaver Simple Search hits

It is now my goal that when I die, I will have the most well-sourced Ancestry tree the world has ever seen. FamilySearch and AI are going to help me achieve that goal and I am going to show you how. 

Currently, I am in a rabbit hole I call "Westmoreland Weaver World" - the Westmoreland in Virginia and thank you God they never had a courthouse fire!!! That's three for three counties - Westmoreland, Fauquier, and Laurens, South Carolina. And thank you ancestors for living your lives in non-burned counties!!! And thank you LDS Church for filming the records of these non-burned counties which are free to access from the comfort of my home. (Thank you period for all filming, I am very grateful.)

Soooo, I have written before about FamilySearch Full Text Search and FamilySearch Simple Search which has now been incorporated into the Full Text search page - YAY! But let me show you why you need to use BOTH searches for sources. Our case study will focus on Elizabeth Weaver Bolt's brother, Zach. Not entirely sure what his name was as he appears as "Zachariah", "Zacharias", and his neighbor and Declaration of Independence signer, Richard Henry Lee refers to him as "Zachary Weaver". *Sigh* Ok, so yes, I did do a Full Text Search with all those name variations, but for some reason, it missed some records he was in until I pasted his FamilySearch ID number into Simple Search. Weirdly, the documents returned were not already attached to him, but the AI knew to return those.

Caveat - and I hate to say it out loud, but FamilySearch's transcriptions can be pretty garbled. And unfortunately as of this writing, they no longer allow you to edit and correct the mistakes. Oftentimes, I will use their "Summarize the document" link to see if I can use that to add to the comments section when attaching a document to a profile; sometimes it's a hit and sometimes it's a miss. Because I am in the Weaver World rabbit hole, I have been uploading the documents to Claude's Fable 5 AI and it transcribes and summarizes what in tarnation they were talking about three hundred years ago! I do follow the Coalition of Responsible AI in Genealogy's Disclosure principle to cite AI use and before I paste in something I will write: "Summary by Claude Fable 5 AI", for example. I download a JPG of the image from FamilySearch and then upload it to Ancestry's "Facts" by clicking "Add" on the Facts page. I then list it as a "Legal Document" and under "Description", I copy and paste in the FamilySearch source info which can be found by clicking the "Information" link on the document in FamilySearch.

As of today, my FamilySearch contribution score for 2026 is 373. Feel free to race me! 

Thrifty Token Tree Tips

Now that I have become a Claude convert, I decided to learn about the models and usage so I don't end up torching cash like Amazon did. Granted, I would run out of cash much faster than Amazon, but still. Hitting usage limits is super annoying! Found this GREAT article with all kinds of tips like "Chat uses less tokens than Co-work" and when you are working on something, Claude will re-read everything all over again which uses more tokens so you can save tokens on a Co-work session just by using this prompt suggested by Ruben Hassid:

"At the end of a Cowork session, prompt “Write a session-notes.md with the key decisions and next steps.” Next session, start with “Read session-notes.md first.”

As so often happens with technology, some of the tips Ruben provided four months ago in April 2026 are already out-of-date due to changes made by Claude. Like, I tried to change the setting to "concise" but it's gone. Yes, I know it partly moved to "Customize->Skills" but "Concise" would need to be manually added.The next burning million-dollar, er...I mean million-token question is which model do I use for what? Ruben gives this advice:

"Grammar checks, brainstorming, reformatting, short answers. Sonnet handles all of this at a fraction of the cost.

Opus + Extended thinking is your heavy machinery. Don’t use heavy machinery to move a chair.

My rule: if the task takes Claude less than 30 seconds to answer, it probably doesn’t need Opus. Switch models before you start the session. It takes 2 clicks."

Remember, his post was written before Fable launched so put Fable under the "complex task" and "token-torching" category in your grey matter.

And speaking of token-torching, I tried out Ruben's tips for NOT uploading images to Claude and torching my tokens that way - I have figured out a way that I could obtain the info I needed for Claude -AND- save tokens in the process. The two apps I used for this were FamilySearch and

the "Notes" app that comes standard in my iPhone. I regularly use the Notes app for voice transcription because it's pretty good. To do this test run, I first opened my FamilySearch tree to Adam Weaver where I know I have saved several pages of a Weaver book in the sources section of Adam's profile. The book is almost 100 pages and as I recently hit that 100 page limit in another chat, I have been thinking about capturing the information in this book without hitting that limit. So here's how I accomplished that and the first test run did not even change my usage percentages! Woo-hoo! Open FamilySearch on your phone, find the image of a source you want to save, click the "copy" icon on the transcription (circled in red in the left screenshot), then paste that into a new note on your phone. Caveat, I was copying and pasting a typed transcription so FamilySearch's transcription had little to no errors. If you are copying transcribed handwriting, there will likely be a higher error rate. I copy and pasted three transcriptions into the Note and then clicked "Select All" in the Note and then pasted that into Claude. I included the prompt in this image and it put the pasted text above my prompt but it still worked like a charm. 

I also have a TON of books and other genealogical resources I have imaged with my phone. So I tried an experiment and searched for "Adam" in my photos, found a page from the same Weaver book, held my finger down on it and pressed down until "Select all" came up, Copy, and then
pasted into the Sonnet 5 chat. It updated with the additional information just fine but as Ruben

points out, it uses more tokens when Claude has to keep re-reading through previous chats. It does also work to just copy and paste the text into the iPhone note, which to reiterate, saves usage over just constantly updating the chat.

Anyhow, between Ruben's tips (I recommend reading his whole post) and my tweaks for genealogy, I hope this saves you some tokens. Don't forget to proof the work for accuracy.