--- title: "The Family Tree That Shows You What Is Missing" description: "The KleioBase family tree is live. Because it is drawn from your actual archive of records rather than a form you type into, it can do something a typed-in tree has nothing to measure against: it..." canonical: "https://kleiobase.com/blog/family-tree-that-shows-what-is-missing" last_updated: "2026-08-01" --- # The Family Tree That Shows You What Is Missing The KleioBase family tree is live. Because it is drawn from your actual archive of records rather than a form you type into, it can do something a typed-in tree has nothing to measure against: it scores every profile for completeness and flags exactly where your research is thin. The KleioBase family tree is live today. Open it from the sidebar and your family draws itself as an interactive chart, built from the records you have already confirmed. Pan, zoom, focus on any person, and follow the branches out. Every genealogy tool has a tree, and ours does the things a good one should, which we cover further down. Every one of these tools is happy to render a tidy chart of what you already know. We wanted a tree that also tells you what to do next. ## A tree that knows what a complete profile looks like Most trees, ours included, will draw a blank where a parent is missing. When you have not recorded someone's father, KleioBase puts a dashed **Unknown father** or **Unknown mother** card in the empty slot so the gap has a place on the chart instead of a branch that just stops. Click it to fill it in. That much is fairly standard now, and it should be. The difference is what happens on the cards that are already filled in. A conventional tree treats a person with a name and two dates as done. Ours does not, because it sits on top of your archive of records rather than a form you typed into, and it knows the difference between a person you have documented and a person you have merely named. Click any card and the side panel opens with a **Research** section. It scores that person against seven basics: name, birth date, birth place, death date, occupation, parents, and at least one linked record. Then it sorts them into what is still Missing and what is already Documented. Your great-grandmother has a name and a birth year, so on a chart that only shows names and dates she looks finished. Here she shows up with a plain list: birth place missing, occupation missing, no record linked. Those are your next three tasks, written out on the person they belong to. The completeness checklist is on every plan, including the free one. ## The tree tells you where to dig On the Researcher plan and above, the tree also surfaces what KleioBase has detected on its own. A card with a small orange marker in its top corner is a research opportunity: that person is either sparsely documented or has no records linked to them at all. The Research section lists the specific findings for that person, such as a gap in their timeline, a sparse profile or a possible connection worth chasing, and each one opens in Insights. Your next research session then has a starting point. You open the tree and look for orange, instead of staring at a complete-looking chart trying to remember where you left off eight months ago. ## The rest of it A research instrument still has to be a good chart, so the tree covers the basics as well. **It builds from your records.** The tree is drawn from the families in your confirmed records and the relationships you add by hand. It is the same knowledge base as the rest of the app, not a separate tree you maintain in parallel. Confirm a record that links two people into a family and they appear. **Focus and breadcrumbs.** Arrows on a card mean there is more family that way. Click one to re-centre the tree on that person and pull the branch into view. A breadcrumb trail tracks where you have been so you can jump back. The focused person lives in the URL, so refreshing, hitting Back, and sharing a link all land in the same place. **Lines that mean something.** Between partners, solid is married, dashed is divorced, dotted is an unmarried partnership. Between parent and child, solid is biological, dashed is adopted, dotted is foster or other. Multiple marriages each get their own line at their own height, so it is clear which children belong to which marriage. Hover any line to trace it. A legend on the canvas explains all of it. **People who appear twice.** When two people who married are also related by blood, the tree draws one of them twice rather than running a line across the entire chart. A "2x" badge marks both copies and clicking it jumps between them. **Quick-add from the canvas.** Every card has a **+** button: add a parent, spouse, child, or sibling without leaving the tree. Fill in a short form, save, and the new relative appears immediately, already linked. You can also click a dashed unknown-parent placeholder to fill that specific slot directly. **Touch and export.** Drag to pan, pinch to zoom, one finger to move. Export the whole tree at full detail as PNG or SVG, or print it to paper or PDF. Exports capture the entire tree rather than the part on your screen, and they come out clean, without the working markers, arrows, and badges, in whichever of light or dark mode you are using. ## Why this shipped last We built the tree after the transcription, the extraction, the matching, and the research companion. That ordering was deliberate, and it is the reason the tree can do this at all. A tree that you type into by hand can only ever show you what you typed. It has no idea what is missing, because as far as it knows, nothing is. A tree drawn on top of a connected archive of your records knows what a complete profile looks like, which of yours fall short, and which branches have never had a single document attached to them. Open the [Family Tree](/family-tree) from the sidebar to see yours. The [Family Tree guide](/docs/family-tree) covers everything above in more detail. Canonical: https://kleiobase.com/blog/family-tree-that-shows-what-is-missing