Research Companion

The Research Companion is an AI chat assistant that can read your knowledge base and answer questions about your family history in plain language. You can find it at /research-companion. It writes its answers as it goes, streaming the text in real time, and can show its reasoning while it works.

This guide covers how to start a conversation, ask good questions, attach records and profiles for context, let the Companion make changes for you, and stay within your usage budget.

Start a conversation

The Companion keeps a list of your past chats in the left panel, so you can pick up where you left off.

1. Click "New conversation" to open a blank chat.
2. Or click any past conversation in the left panel to reopen it.

Your conversations are saved automatically. When you come back to the Companion, your most recent conversation reopens on its own, so you do not have to find it again.

Ask questions

Ask in natural language, the way you would ask another researcher. The Companion searches your people, records, families, and timeline to answer.

Some examples to try:

• "What records do I have for John Smith?"
• "Who are Sarah's siblings?"
• "What is missing for my great-grandfather?"

You do not need to phrase things precisely or use special syntax. Describe what you want to know, and the Companion pulls the relevant information from your knowledge base to build its answer.

Citations you can click

When the Companion names a person or a record in its answer, that name appears as a chip. Click the chip to jump straight to that profile or record. These links are checked for accuracy, so a chip points to the exact item the Companion referenced.

This makes it easy to verify an answer or to keep working. Ask a question, then click through to the profile or record the Companion mentioned to see the underlying detail for yourself.

Attach records and profiles for context

You can pin up to 5 items to a conversation so the AI focuses on them. The items you can attach are records, profiles, duplicate matches, conflicts, and research findings.

There are two ways to attach something:

1. Use the + button in the message box to add an item to the conversation you are in.
2. Use the "Ask Kleio" button on a record, profile, or match elsewhere in the app. This opens a fresh conversation with that item already attached.

The right-hand panel lists everything that is currently attached, so you can always see what the AI is working with.

Tip: attach a record or profile first, then ask about it. The Companion answers best when it has context, so giving it the specific item up front leads to sharper, more grounded answers than asking about a name in the abstract.

Let the Companion make changes (it always asks first)

The Companion can offer to make edits for you. It can:

• Create a profile
• Update facts on a profile
• Link a record to a person
• Add a family relationship
• Merge duplicate profiles
• Resolve a research suggestion

It never makes a change on its own. When it wants to edit something, it pauses and shows a confirmation card that describes exactly what it plans to do. Nothing happens until you act on that card:

1. Read the change described on the confirmation card.
2. Click Confirm to apply it, or Reject to cancel it.

If you find yourself confirming the same kind of action repeatedly, you can choose "Always allow this session" on the card. That stops the Companion from asking again for that kind of action, but only for the rest of that one conversation. The next conversation starts fresh and asks again.

Destructive actions, such as merging two profiles, are clearly flagged so you know when a change cannot be undone as easily. For more on cleaning up duplicates, see Finding duplicates.

Search the public web

Beyond your own records, the Companion can search the public web and read pages to bring in outside context, such as historical background or information about an archive.

Web results appear as plain links. They are kept visually separate from the citation chips that link into your own knowledge base, so you can always tell whether a source is something from your records or something from the open web.

Work on research suggestions

KleioBase generates research suggestions for you, pointing out gaps and records that may be missing. The Companion can help you act on them.

1. Ask the Companion about your research suggestions to talk through what is open.
2. Attach a suggestion to the conversation to focus on it and work it through.

Because a research suggestion is one of the item types you can attach, you can pin one and then ask the Companion how to close the gap it describes.

Stop a response

Navigating away does not stop a response. If you leave the page while the Companion is replying, the answer keeps writing in the background and is waiting for you when you return. This means you will not lose a long answer just because you switched to another part of the app.

To actually stop a reply while it is being written, click the Stop button. Use this when an answer is heading in the wrong direction or you have already seen what you needed.

Usage limits

Each plan includes a usage budget for the Companion over a rolling time window. A banner shows how much of that budget you have used so far.

When the budget is spent, you have two options:

1. Wait for the time window to reset, which restores your budget.
2. Upgrade your plan for a larger budget.

Higher plans also use a stronger AI model, which can improve the quality of answers. For the details of what each plan includes, see Plans & Billing.

Where to go next

• Your Knowledge Base is the data the Companion reads when it answers your questions.
• Finding duplicates covers how the Companion can help you spot and merge duplicate profiles.
• Uploading records explains how records get into your knowledge base in the first place.