I was sitting in front of a scan of a Polish birth certificate from 1887. The handwriting was in Russian cursive. I had nine browser tabs open - a scanning app, ChatGPT for transcription, Google Translate, a genealogy database, a family tree application, a spreadsheet where I tracked sources, and a few reference tabs for deciphering old handwriting. One document. Nine tabs. And I still had to copy names and dates by hand from the AI output into the spreadsheet, then cross-reference them against people I had already found.
That was the workflow. Not just for that one document, but for every document. Multiply it by a hundred records and you get a research process that is more data entry than actual research.
I built KleioBase because that workflow was broken.
The problem is not the tools
Every individual tool in that nine-tab setup works fine on its own. AI transcription is good. Translation services are accurate enough. Family tree applications handle trees well. The problem is that none of them talk to each other. You are the integration layer. You copy, paste, reformat, cross-reference, and organize - manually, repeatedly, for every single document.
This means context gets lost constantly. You transcribe a birth record and get a father's name. Two weeks later you find a marriage record with the same name, but you do not remember the birth record. Or you do remember, but you cannot find it in your files. The information exists somewhere in your research, scattered across tools and folders. Finding it again takes almost as long as finding it the first time.
The real cost is not time. It is the connections you never make because the data is not organized in a way that lets you see them.
What we built
KleioBase is a research platform where your documents go in and structured, connected research comes out. The core workflow is simple.
You upload a document - a scan, a photograph, a digital image of a historical record. The AI reads it. It transcribes the text, translates it if needed, and extracts structured data: names, dates, places, relationships, occupations. You review what the AI found and confirm or correct it. The confirmed data flows into your knowledge base automatically.
Your knowledge base is the center of everything. It is not a family tree, though it contains one. It is the full picture of your research - every person, every record, every place, every event, and the connections between them. When you upload a new document, the system checks whether the people it found already exist in your knowledge base. When they match, the records link together.
That is the core loop. Upload, extract, confirm, connect. The more documents you add, the richer and more connected your research becomes.
What you can do with it
The best way to explain what KleioBase does is to describe real scenarios.
Process documents in languages you cannot read. Upload a handwritten Polish birth certificate from 1892. Get back a structured transcription with the original text, a literal transliteration, and an English translation. See the names, dates, and relationships pulled out and organized. Review everything before it enters your knowledge base. The AI handles Russian, Polish, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin, and other languages common in historical genealogy documents.
See everything about a person in one place. Once you have uploaded several documents, each person's profile shows every record they appear in, their family connections, the places associated with them, and a timeline of events. No more hunting through folders to find the marriage record that mentions your great-grandmother's maiden name.
Find the same person across different records. A birth record from 1892 lists "Jan Kowalski" born in Kalisz. A census record from 1910 lists "Johann Kowalsky" in the same region. Different spelling, different language, same person. The matching engine evaluates name similarity, dates, places, and family context to surface likely duplicates. You decide whether they are the same person or not.
Ask questions about your own research. The Research Companion is an AI assistant that has access to your entire knowledge base. Ask it "What do I know about the Kowalski family in Kalisz?" and it draws from your actual documents and extracted data to give you an answer. Ask it to summarize the life events of a particular ancestor. Ask it what gaps exist in your research. Its answers about your family are grounded in your own documents and extracted data.
Bring your existing research. If you have a family tree in GEDCOM format, you can import it. Your existing people and relationships become part of the knowledge base, ready to be linked with documents you upload.
What this is not
KleioBase is not a records database. We do not have a collection of census images or vital records for you to search through. You bring your own documents - the ones you found in archives, received from relatives, or downloaded from other services.
It is not just a family tree builder, either. Family relationships take shape as you confirm records, but the platform is built around documents and research, not around drawing boxes and lines. The tree is a byproduct of good research, not the starting point.
And the AI is a tool, not an authority. It extracts data from your documents and suggests connections. You confirm everything. Old handwriting is hard. Historical naming conventions are inconsistent. The AI will make mistakes, and the platform is designed around the assumption that you will catch and correct them. Your knowledge base contains what you have verified, not what the AI guessed.
Where we are
KleioBase is live and open to everyone. You can sign up, upload documents, and start building your knowledge base today. There is a free tier to start with.
The platform is in active development, with new capabilities shipping regularly. The core workflow - upload, extract, confirm, connect - works today and gets better every week.
I built KleioBase because I needed it for my own research into Eastern European Jewish families, and because I believe genealogists deserve better tools than copy-pasting between nine browser tabs. The problems it solves are problems I run into personally, every time I sit down to do research.
Try it
If you do genealogy research and your workflow involves too many tabs, too much copy-pasting, and too little connection between your documents and your tree - KleioBase might be what you have been looking for.
Sign up at kleiobase.com. Upload a few documents. See what the AI extracts. Tell me what works and what does not. This is software built for researchers, and researcher feedback is what shapes it.
Start building your family history
Upload a record and let KleioBase transcribe, translate, and connect it - all in one place, with a research partner that remembers everything you find.
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