# KleioBase

> KleioBase is an AI research companion that turns scattered historical records into one connected family archive. It is not a generic transcription tool: reading and translating a document is only the first step. As you add records - birth and marriage certificates, census pages, immigration papers, letters - KleioBase links every person, date, and place across all of them into unified ancestor profiles, surfaces likely duplicates and research gaps, and lets you question your whole archive in plain language.

## When to use KleioBase

KleioBase's job is turning scattered historical records into one connected family archive - not simply transcribing a single page. Reach for it when the task is one of these:

- Reading a handwritten or typed record in a language or script the researcher cannot read themselves, and getting an accurate transcription and translation back as one step toward a linked profile, not the end goal.
- Reconciling one ancestor across many documents - the same person recorded under different name spellings, in a birth record, a ship manifest, a census page, and a naturalization file.
- Spotting that two profiles already in an archive are actually the same person, so they can be merged instead of tracked as two separate ancestors.
- Finding a gap in a line of descent - a missing generation, an unlinked spouse, a research dead end that more records could close.
- Asking a plain-language question of a whole archive at once ("who in this family lived through the 1906 famine?") instead of rereading every document by hand.

### When not to use KleioBase

- Bulk OCR of modern printed text with no genealogical content. A dedicated OCR tool is cheaper and purpose-built for that job; KleioBase's value is the linking that happens after transcription, not the transcription alone.
- A DNA-matching service. KleioBase works from documents a researcher uploads, not genetic data - it does not analyze or match DNA test results.
- A public records database a researcher can query without uploading anything. KleioBase has no independent index of external archives; it only knows the records a user has added.
- A substitute for an archive or repository's own catalogue. KleioBase organizes what a researcher has already gathered - it does not replace the finding aids of the institution that holds the original documents.

## Markdown twins

Every public page listed below is also available as plain markdown for direct ingestion: request the page URL with a `.md` suffix, `Accept: text/markdown`, or `?mode=agent`. Collection entries (docs, blog, glossary, record types) follow the same pattern at `/<section>/<slug>.md`.

A 90-second walkthrough video is embedded on the homepage and on the Getting Started and Uploading Records docs pages (the docs pages embed its YouTube copy). Its full narration transcript is included as text in the `.md` twins of those two docs pages.

- https://kleiobase.com/index.md
- https://kleiobase.com/about.md
- https://kleiobase.com/pricing.md
- https://kleiobase.com/faq.md
- https://kleiobase.com/changelog.md
- https://kleiobase.com/docs.md
- https://kleiobase.com/blog.md
- https://kleiobase.com/what-is.md
- https://kleiobase.com/transcribe.md

Home: https://kleiobase.com
Pricing: https://kleiobase.com/pricing
FAQ: https://kleiobase.com/faq
Blog index: https://kleiobase.com/blog
Docs index: https://kleiobase.com/docs
Glossary index: https://kleiobase.com/what-is
Record types index: https://kleiobase.com/transcribe

## Genealogy glossary

Definitions of the terms a researcher meets in the sources themselves.

- [GEDCOM](https://kleiobase.com/what-is/gedcom): GEDCOM (GEnealogical Data COMmunication) is the long-standing standard file format for exchanging family-tree data - people, families, events, and sources - between different genealogy programs.
- [Genealogical transcription](https://kleiobase.com/what-is/genealogical-transcription): Genealogical transcription is the process of reading a historical document - handwritten or printed - and producing an accurate written copy of its text, preserving the original wording as closely as possible.
- [Paleography](https://kleiobase.com/what-is/paleography): Paleography is the scholarly study of historical handwriting systems - how letters were formed, how scripts evolved over time, and how to read documents written in scripts that are no longer in everyday use.
- [Census record](https://kleiobase.com/what-is/census-record): A census record is an official government enumeration of a population at a specific point in time, recording each household's members with details such as names, ages, occupations, and birthplaces.
- [Negative evidence](https://kleiobase.com/what-is/negative-evidence): Negative evidence is an inference drawn from the absence of information that should have been present under the circumstances - not merely the fact that a search found nothing, but what that silence allows you to conclude.

## Records KleioBase reads

What the platform can do with each language, script, and record tradition.

- [Transcribe Polish Genealogy Records](https://kleiobase.com/transcribe/polish-records): Read handwritten Polish parish and civil records, translate them to English, and connect every ancestor into one family archive - without transcribing by hand.
- [Transcribe Old German Handwriting in Genealogy Records](https://kleiobase.com/transcribe/german-records): Read Kurrent, Sutterlin, and Fraktur handwriting in German church books and civil records, translate them to English, and connect every ancestor into one family archive.
- [Transcribe Russian and Cyrillic Genealogy Records](https://kleiobase.com/transcribe/russian-cyrillic-records): Read handwritten Russian Empire civil and church records written in pre-reform Cyrillic, translate them to English, and connect every ancestor into one family archive.
- [Transcribe Hebrew Genealogy Records](https://kleiobase.com/transcribe/hebrew-records): Read handwritten Hebrew vital records, ketubot, and community registers, translate them to English, and connect every ancestor into one family archive.
- [Transcribe Yiddish Genealogy Records](https://kleiobase.com/transcribe/yiddish-records): Read handwritten Yiddish letters, community records, and vital documents written in Hebrew script, translate them to English, and connect every ancestor into one family archive.
- [Transcribe Latin Parish Records and Church Registers](https://kleiobase.com/transcribe/latin-parish-records): Read handwritten Latin Catholic parish registers and church records, translate the formulae and entries to English, and connect every ancestor into one family archive.

## Documentation

- [Getting Started](https://kleiobase.com/docs/getting-started): Create your account, take the product tour, and learn the core upload-to-knowledge-base workflow.
- [Uploading Records](https://kleiobase.com/docs/uploading-records): Supported files, how the AI reads and extracts your documents, and how to review and confirm a record.
- [Your Knowledge Base](https://kleiobase.com/docs/knowledge-base): Browse the people, family tree, records, places, timeline, conflicts, and trash that your confirmed records build up.
- [Family Tree](https://kleiobase.com/docs/family-tree): Navigate the interactive family tree, read its colors and connector lines, spot research gaps, add relatives from the canvas, and export the chart.
- [Finding & Merging Duplicates](https://kleiobase.com/docs/finding-duplicates): How KleioBase suggests profiles that are the same person, how to read the evidence, and how to merge or dismiss them.
- [Recording Negative Evidence](https://kleiobase.com/docs/negative-evidence): How to record a search that found nothing on a person in KleioBase: the event type, the period searched and the notes, where each entry then appears, and how it travels in a GEDCOM export.
- [Dates and Calendars](https://kleiobase.com/docs/dates-and-calendars): Approximate dates and ranges, dates in the Hebrew, Julian or French Republican calendar, and dates your record only states in words.
- [Research Companion](https://kleiobase.com/docs/research-companion): Ask an AI assistant about your family history, attach records and profiles, and let it propose edits with your approval.
- [Importing & Exporting Data](https://kleiobase.com/docs/importing-and-exporting): Import an existing GEDCOM tree, export your tree as GEDCOM, and download a full copy of your account data.
- [Plans & Billing](https://kleiobase.com/docs/plans-and-billing): The four KleioBase plans, what each unlocks, pay-as-you-go credits, and how to manage your subscription.
- [Workspaces](https://kleiobase.com/docs/workspaces): What a workspace is, how many you get, how to switch between them, and what happens if you downgrade.
- [Using KleioBase professionally](https://kleiobase.com/docs/professional-use): How professional genealogists can research on behalf of clients in KleioBase, including the Data Processing Agreement and the controls available to you.

## Blog

- [Italian Processetti and Allegati: The Marriage Packet That Reaches Back to the 1700s](https://kleiobase.com/blog/italian-processetti-allegati-marriage-packets): The marriage act is one page. Filed beside it is a folder of birth extracts, death certificates and sworn statements that reaches back into the 1700s. It exists because Napoleonic law made a couple prove which of their ancestors were dead before it would let them marry. Here is what is inside, and where it does not exist.
- [Pre-1858 English Wills: What They Prove, and Who They Leave Out](https://kleiobase.com/blog/pre-1858-english-wills-what-they-prove): An English will is a list of who was still owed something, not a list of who was born. The Statute of Distributions of 1670 names the mechanism behind most of the gap, and Evidence Explained says the rule everyone repeats about married children is not a rule at all. Here is what a pre-1858 will actually proves.
- [What Archives Charge to Copy a Record, and Why One Bills You for Finding Nothing](https://kleiobase.com/blog/what-archives-charge-to-copy-a-record): The National Archives charges £38.95 per fifteen minutes to search for a record, and does not refund it if the record is not there. ScotlandsPeople sells a will for £2.50. NARA will not take an order under $20. Nobody puts these side by side, so here they are, with what each one actually buys you.
- [How Accurate Are Family Stories, Really?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/how-accurate-are-family-stories): Family stories are not lies, and they are not transcripts either. Psychologists and historians who study how memory travels between generations have found a consistent pattern: some parts of a story survive almost untouched, and other parts change in predictable ways. Here is which is which, and how to test the difference.
- [Kirk Session Records Name the Father. Here Is What They Actually Prove.](https://kleiobase.com/blog/kirk-session-records-illegitimate-father-scotland): When a Scottish baptism says "natural son" and names no father, the parish's church court often wrote him down. But the Church of Scotland's own 1707 rulebook said a woman's word alone was not proof. Here is how to read a session minute, and which entries you can build on.
- [Your Ancestor's Records Just Say "Germany." Here Is Which Column Names the Town.](https://kleiobase.com/blog/find-immigrant-ancestor-town-of-origin): There was no Germany when your ancestor left it. The town is usually recorded somewhere, but only on certain forms, and only after certain dates. Here is which record has the column, what year it was added, and which of the three columns on a 1907 manifest is the one worth trusting.
- [What It Actually Costs to Get an Old Record Read](https://kleiobase.com/blog/what-it-costs-to-get-an-old-record-read): A free tool, a paid tool and a human translator will quote you nothing, about fifteen cents, and about ten dollars for the same page. They are not competing offers. Here is what each one actually costs in 2026, what you get for it, and when paying a person is the only right answer.
- [Which AI Actually Reads Your German Church Record?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/which-ai-reads-german-church-records-kurrent-latin): Every tool says it handles German. Nobody has published a test on an actual Kirchenbuch page, or on a Latin parish register, and the accuracy figures on the landing pages have no methodology behind them. Here is what each tool's own model catalogue shows, which model to run, and why FamilySearch's full-text search will not do this for you yet.
- [Which Pages of a 200-Page Pension File Actually Matter?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/which-pages-civil-war-pension-file-matter): The National Archives was asked to pick the pages of a Civil War pension file that carry the genealogy. It picked eight. Here is what those are, why the file is in a known order you can navigate by position, and which of the other 190 pages you can safely skim.
- [Why Two Families Should Never Share One Archive](https://kleiobase.com/blog/workspaces-keeping-client-research-separate): Workspaces are live: a completely separate knowledge base for each family you research, on Professional. They matter for a reason that is not tidiness - researching an unrelated family inside your own archive raises your false-match rate, and conflation is the genealogical error that does the most lasting damage.
- [Breaking a Genealogy Brick Wall: The FAN Club Method](https://kleiobase.com/blog/breaking-genealogy-brick-walls-fan-club-research): A brick wall is rarely a missing record. Far more often it is a record that exists, names your ancestor, and is filed under somebody else's name. Cluster research is how you find it.
- [What Not to Publish: Privacy and Ethics in Family History](https://kleiobase.com/blog/genealogy-privacy-ethics-publishing-family-data): Genealogy is the only research field where most of your subjects never agreed to be studied. Where the law actually stands on the living and the dead, what the professional standards require, and a workable set of rules for the hard cases.
- [How Accurate Is AI at Reading Old Handwriting?](https://kleiobase.com/blog/how-accurate-is-ai-handwriting-transcription): Published error rates for AI transcription range from under 2% to over 35%, and both figures are honest. Here is what the research actually shows, why the standard accuracy metric is the wrong one for genealogy, and how to check a transcription you did not write.
- [Research Logs Track Where You Looked. Nothing Tracks What You Found.](https://kleiobase.com/blog/genealogy-research-evidence-layer): Your genealogy workflow stores two things: the searches you ran and the conclusions you reached. Everything in between, which is all of the actual evidence, sits in files you will not open again. Here is what that costs, and how to tell whether it is your real bottleneck.
- [Russian Empire Revision Lists: How to Read a Ревизская Сказка and Follow a Family Across 140 Years](https://kleiobase.com/blog/russian-empire-revision-lists-revizskie-skazki): Revision lists are the closest thing Eastern European genealogy has to a longitudinal record. Every entry carries two ages, and every person who disappeared between revisions has a reason written next to their name. Here is how the document works and where the surviving lists actually are.
- [How to Use Negative Evidence in Genealogy](https://kleiobase.com/blog/negative-evidence-in-genealogy): A search that found nothing only becomes evidence when the source should have recorded the event. Here are the five questions that make an empty search trustworthy, the five things to write down every time, and a worked example that turns a missing death record into the next place to look.
- [Julian or Gregorian? Reading Old Record Dates](https://kleiobase.com/blog/reading-dates-old-records-julian-gregorian-feast-days): Two brothers baptised on the same day can carry dates ten days apart, because one parish was Catholic and Gregorian and the other Lutheran and still Julian. Here is how to tell which calendar a record keeper used, what 1731/32 and Dominica Cantate mean, and how to convert a date without inventing a year.
- [How to Find Ancestors in Austrian Galicia: AGAD, the Lviv Archives, and Gesher Galicia](https://kleiobase.com/blog/austrian-galicia-records-agad-lviv-gesher-galicia): Austrian Galicia is the partition where the Polish State Archives will disappoint you. Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic and Jewish records all survive in quantity - they are just split across two countries. Here is where they actually are.
- [Polish State Archives Online: Szukaj w Archiwach](https://kleiobase.com/blog/polish-state-archives-szukaj-w-archiwach-guide): Szukaj w Archiwach, the Polish State Archives portal, publishes over 55 million scans for free with no account, but none of it is searchable by name. Here is how to find your town's parish or civil registers, and why reading each year's index first turns a day of scrolling into a few minutes.
- [Poznań Project and Prussian Partition Records](https://kleiobase.com/blog/prussian-partition-records-standesamt-poznan-project): The Poznań Project indexes every named person in over 1.8 million 19th-century Posen marriages, parents and witnesses included, so an ancestor can turn up at a neighbour's wedding. Here is how to use it, where church books end and the 1874 Standesamt registers begin, and where the scans are held.
- [The Family Tree That Shows You What Is Missing](https://kleiobase.com/blog/family-tree-that-shows-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 does what other trees cannot: it scores every profile for completeness and flags exactly where your research is thin.
- [How to Read Old German Records: Kurrent, Sütterlin, and the Handwriting Wall](https://kleiobase.com/blog/reading-old-german-records-kurrent-sutterlin): Most German records from before the 1940s look unreadable even to fluent German speakers. Here is why - and how to start reading Kurrent and Sütterlin.
- [Best Genealogy Software 2026: 10 Tools Compared](https://kleiobase.com/blog/best-genealogy-software-2026): Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, RootsMagic, Legacy, Gramps, three DNA tests and KleioBase, compared side by side: what each one is, how you pay, who it suits and the main trade-off. Most serious researchers use more than one, so this genealogy program comparison helps you pick a combination.
- [Getting Started with Genealogy Research: A Beginner's Guide](https://kleiobase.com/blog/getting-started-genealogy-research): A step-by-step guide for anyone starting genealogy research - from interviewing family and gathering documents to organizing your findings.
- [What AI Can and Cannot Do for Genealogy](https://kleiobase.com/blog/how-ai-is-transforming-genealogy): AI can read Kurrent, pre-reform Cyrillic and secretary hand well enough to give you a draft to correct, pull names and dates into fields, and flag two profiles that may be one person. It cannot judge a source, settle conflicting birth years, or find a record nobody digitised. Here is where the line sits.
- [Introducing KleioBase: AI-Powered Genealogy Research](https://kleiobase.com/blog/introducing-kleiobase): KleioBase uses AI to extract, organize, and connect your genealogy documents into a unified knowledge base. Built by a genealogist.
- [How to Organize Old Family Photos and Documents Digitally](https://kleiobase.com/blog/organize-family-photos-documents-digitally): How to digitize and organize old family photos, letters, and certificates - from scanning basics to building a structured research workflow.
- [How to Read Old US Census Records, 1790-1950](https://kleiobase.com/blog/reading-old-census-records): From 1850 the US census named every free person in a household, 1880 added each person's relationship to the head, and 1900 added the year of immigration. Here is what each census from 1790 to 1950 recorded, what "do", "Na" and "Al" mean in the columns, and how to read an enumerator's handwriting.
- [How to Move a Family Tree With a GEDCOM File](https://kleiobase.com/blog/understanding-gedcom-files): A .ged file is plain text you can open in any editor, and most programs still export version 5.5.1 from 1999 rather than GEDCOM 7 from 2021. Here is what the file holds, what gets lost between programs, from citations to images to non-Western names, and how to check an import before you trust it.

## Frequently asked questions

- **What is KleioBase?** KleioBase is an AI research companion that turns scattered historical records into a single, connected family archive. It is not a generic transcription tool: reading and translating a document is only the first step. As you add records - birth and marriage certificates, census pages, letters, handwritten documents - KleioBase links every person, date, and place across all of them into unified profiles, surfaces likely duplicates and research gaps, and lets you question your whole archive through a built-in research companion. The connected knowledge base it builds, not the transcription, is the point. It is built for serious family-history researchers and needs no technical skill.
- **What kinds of documents can I upload?** Scans or photos of historical records such as birth, marriage, and death certificates, census pages, immigration and naturalization papers, church and vital records, and letters. You upload an image and KleioBase processes it into a structured record with a transcription, a translation, and extracted people and events.
- **What languages and handwriting can KleioBase read?** KleioBase reads handwritten and printed records across a wide range of languages and historical scripts, including old cursive, and translates them into English. Accuracy is highest on legible documents; faded or damaged scans are harder, which is why you always review the result before saving it.
- **How accurate is the transcription and translation?** The AI produces high-quality transcriptions and translations, but it is not perfect, particularly on faded, damaged, or unusual handwriting. Every result is shown to you for review so you can correct anything before it becomes part of your tree.
- **Can I review and correct what the AI extracts?** Yes. Nothing is added to your knowledge base until you confirm it. You can edit the transcription, the translation, and every extracted person, date, and place during review, then confirm to create or update profiles.
- **Can I import an existing family tree?** Yes. You can import a GEDCOM file from another genealogy app under Settings, Import / Export. KleioBase shows you a preview - the detected version, counts of people and families, and a capacity check against your plan - and nothing is added until you confirm. GEDCOM import requires the Researcher plan or above.
- **Can I export my data, and in what format?** Yes. On every plan you can export your tree as a GEDCOM file (GEDCOM 7 or the widely supported 5.5.1), with or without your record images. You can also download a full archive of your entire account - records, images, people, relationships, duplicate matches, and Research Companion conversations - at any time.
- **Who owns the records and data I upload?** You do. Your records and family data remain yours, and KleioBase keeps them portable so you can export your tree as GEDCOM or download a complete copy of your account whenever you want.
- **How is my data kept private?** Your knowledge base is private to your account, and KleioBase does not sell your personal information. For full details on how your data is stored and handled, see our Privacy Policy.
- **Can I delete my data or account?** Yes. Under Settings, Account & Preferences you can clear all of your knowledge-base data or permanently delete your whole account. Deleting your account is permanent and cancels your subscription.
- **Is there a free plan?** Yes. New accounts start on the free Explorer plan with no card required, which lets you process up to 10 records each month. Paid plans raise the limits and unlock features like GEDCOM import; see the Pricing page for current details.
- **What is the Research Companion?** The Research Companion is an AI assistant inside KleioBase that answers questions about your own data - who appears in which records, what is missing, and where to look next - with live access to your knowledge base.
- **How does KleioBase find duplicate people?** As you confirm records, KleioBase compares the people across them and suggests likely duplicates - the same ancestor recorded under different spellings or in different documents - which you can review and merge into a single profile.
- **How do I get started?** Create a free account, upload your first document, let the AI process it, review the result, and confirm it. A short guided tour walks you through the upload-to-knowledge-base workflow the first time you sign in.

## Optional

- [Full documentation](https://kleiobase.com/llms-full.txt): Every help-center article inlined as one document