Genealogy Research Kit

# Genealogy Research Kit — the prompt

Copy the text below the line into Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI chatbot. Fill in the three bracketed sections with your own details. Keep each section short — one or two sentences is plenty. The AI will do the rest.

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You are a careful genealogy research partner. I am chasing one specific family-history question and I need a focused plan, not a general overview. Please help me turn what I know into a short, ordered sequence of next steps.

Here is what I know for sure:
[WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW — names, dates, places, relationships you're reasonably confident about. If you're not sure about something, say "uncertain" next to it. Example: "My paternal grandfather, Henryk Wozniak, was born around 1902 (uncertain) in or near Krakow (uncertain village), immigrated to the United States sometime between 1920 and 1924, settled in Chicago, and died in 1971."]

Here is the mystery I want to solve:
[ONE SPECIFIC QUESTION. Not "tell me about my family" — one question. Example: "I want to find out which specific town or village he came from, and ideally the names of his parents." Or: "I want to find the ship and the exact arrival date."]

Here are the relevant places and years:
[GEOGRAPHY AND DATES that matter for this question. If you only know the country, that's okay — say so. Example: "Krakow region, Austro-Hungarian empire before 1918, then Poland. Chicago, Illinois, from the early 1920s onward."]

Now please do four things, in this order:

**1. Reality check.** Tell me honestly whether this question is answerable from the information I've given you. If it's not, tell me what one additional piece of information would make it answerable, and how I might find that piece at home (old documents, photos, letters, a living relative I could call).

**2. A research plan in three to five steps.** Each step should include:
  - The specific source to check (not "genealogy websites" — name the database, archive, or record set)
  - What I'm looking for in that source
  - What the source *can* and *cannot* tell me, so I don't over-interpret what I find
  - Roughly how long the step will take, and whether it's free or paid

Put the steps in the order I should actually do them. Start with the step most likely to succeed, not the most exotic one.

**3. Questions to ask living relatives.** Before I dig through archives, I should talk to any older family members who might remember something. Give me three to five specific questions I can ask them — questions that are narrow enough to trigger memory, not questions so broad they'll shrug. "Tell me about your father" is a bad question. "Do you remember what language your father spoke when he was angry?" is a good one.

**4. A 'what if I find nothing' note.** Tell me, briefly, what it would mean if this mystery doesn't resolve — what the absence of records from that region, that year, or that community usually indicates, so I don't take a dead end personally.

Do not invent names, dates, places, or relationships. If you don't know something, say so. If a common family legend about this region (e.g., "the name was changed at Ellis Island") is likely to come up, flag it and explain what usually turned out to be true instead.

Keep the whole response under 800 words. I want a plan I can actually do this weekend, not an overview I'll have to re-read three times.

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## How to use this

1. Copy everything between the two horizontal lines above.
2. Paste it into Claude or another AI chat.
3. Replace the three bracketed sections with your own details. Be as specific as you can, but "I'm not sure" is a totally acceptable answer — the AI will tell you what to do about the uncertainty.
4. Read the plan the AI gives you. Do step one. Write down what you find.
5. When you've finished the five steps — or when you've hit a wall — come back and paste the prompt again, this time filling in the "what I know" section with the new information you gathered. The plan evolves with you.

## Tips for better results

- **Use one question per session.** If you want to find your grandfather's village *and* your great-grandmother's maiden name, run the prompt twice. A plan for two mysteries becomes two half-plans for one mystery each.
- **Name your uncertainty.** If you wrote down "1902" but you're not sure, say "around 1902 — it could be 1900 or 1905." The AI treats that as a range and suggests sources that don't require the exact year.
- **Mention what you've already tried.** "I already searched FamilySearch for his name and found nothing" saves you a step and tells the AI to think differently.
- **Ask for alternate name spellings.** Old immigration records are full of creative transliterations. If your ancestor's name was Wozniak, it might be on a document as Vozniak, Voznyak, Wozniack, or Wosniak. Ask the AI to suggest spelling variants to search for.
- **Write down the answer.** A research plan is only useful if you still have it next Saturday. Paste the AI's response into a document and add notes under each step as you go.

Good luck. When the plan leads somewhere real, save that document. One day it might be the first chapter of what your grandchildren will call "the research Grandma did."

Pair this prompt with the [Genealogy Sleuth](/agents/soul-the-genealogy-sleuth) when you want ongoing research conversations, or the [Family History Interview Guide](/agents/skill-family-history-interview-guide) before you sit down with an older relative.