Steve Little's AI Agent "Kinfolk Observatory" Works Well

 Steve Little posted Fun Prompt Friday: “Fable, Make Something Incredible” on 13 November 2026, and it is, in my humble opinion, incredible, fantastic and fun. 

The blog post describes how he created the "Kinfolk Observatory" AI agent and the information it provides the user based on the contents of a user's GEDCOM file. 

The agent was created by Steve using his directions to AI Claude Fable 5.2.  The agent program was created and Steve has shared it with us for free, and it does not use any AI service. There is nothing to install on your computer and no account to make. Your data stays on your computer.

1)  The Kinfolk Observatory agent creates 13 different views of your GEDCOM file in graphical and visual form. All 13 views are waiting at https://observatory.vibegenealogy.ai/.  

 

(AI Google Notebook Infographic - Kinfolk Observatory Desktop Agent)

Here is the top of the home page:

The home page is set up for a Fictional Family tree.  The user can click on the "Family" field on the top line and choose Steve's "An Ashe County Family," "The Spanish Hapsburgs," or "Load your family file."

To load your own GEDCOM file, the user has to have a GEDCOM file on their desktop computer created by a genealogy software program (like RootsMagic or Reunion) or a family tree site (like Ancestry or MyHeritage).  

The GEDCOM can be loaded into the Kinfolk Observatory using that link in the "Family" field or the bright yellow "Load your family file" near the bottom right of the image above.  It is really that simple if you can make a GEDCOM file.

The 13 different views that can be created are explained in detail on Steve's blog post.  They are:

At the bottom of the home page, Steve offers these comments:

Three things to know before you trust a picture:

• A tree is a set of conclusions. Every picture shows what the file records. It cannot tell you whether a recorded parent, date or place is right.
• Living people are removed. Anyone with no death or burial recorded with a date or a place, who was born in the last 110 years or whose age cannot be worked out, loses their name, dates and places as the file is opened. They stay only as unnamed marks so the family still connects.
• Cousins sometimes married cousins. When they did, the same ancestors appear on several branches. Several pictures count those repeats; genealogists call it pedigree collapse.

2)  For my first use of this Kinfolk Observatory agent, I chose to make a GEDCOM file of all of my known ancestors (not their families) -- 2,950 people from my RootsMagic family tree of 75,169 hitorical people. Since I have only ancestors in my GEDCOM file, there are no siblings or other spouses of my ancestors in the GEDCOM file, so some of the 13 views don't work well for me using this file. 

When I clicked the "Load your family file" button on the home page, a screen appeared where I had to choose "You" -- myself from the GEDCOM file, as shown below:

I typed my name into the box and when I clicked on the yellow "Continue" button, I was into the program and the top of the home page looked like this:

Each of the 13 views, which are tabs on the second line at the top of the home page, can be clicked to show the Kinfolk Observatory view of your ancestors.

Here are some of the 13 views that worked well for me (note that if you run your mouse over any node on these graphics, you can see the name and other information about that person):

• The Night Sky
  

This view shows the whole recorded family as a star map: the earliest births at the center, the latest at the rim, each family line fanning outward. With "only" 2,950 stars, that is awfully busy.  There are names for some persons but the lines obscure most of them. I am marked as "You" at the very top of the image.

•  The Ancestor Fan 

This view shows every recorded ancestor of You, ring by ring. A gold edge marks a person who fills more than one place, which happens when cousins married.The user can choose the number of generations (the maximum is 10).  The user can select the color scheme on the third line down the top of the page. The above chart is for different Surnames. 

• Ancestors Through Time

This view shows the recorded ancestors of You, placed by birth year or by generation, with a line from every child to each parent. The user can choose views on the third line from the top. I chose Arrange by "Pedigree order," Scale by "Birth year," Color "Men and women," Generations "10," and Width "Fit." The user can fiddle with the width of the screen - I chose "Fit" to get it all on one screen without scrolling. This view is similar to the Brad Lyon's Exploring Family Trees website.

• River of Lifetimes

This view shows Every person with a recorded birth year, drawn as one thin line from birth to death along a timeline, so the whole family reads as a river running through the years.  I chose Color by "Surname."  Note the curve at the bottom of the screen which shows the number of people alive each year.

• By the Numbers 

This view shows The whole family tree counted up: when and where people were born, how long they lived, how big families were, and what they were named. This view is longer than shown with more data below the bottom of the image above.

• Where They Lived

This view shows where the family was born and lived: how birthplaces changed from parents to children, and which places held the family decade by decade.

• What's Missing

This view shows each generation of You’s recorded ancestors: how many places are filled, and which details are not recorded.

You can select a different "You" person by clicking a person on one of the charts (say, the Ancestor Fan chart) and his summary will appear on the right side of the screen and that will bge your new Home person for the charts.  Here is a chart with Isaac Seaver as the Home person:

3)  The above shows seven of the 13 charts for my GEDCOM file. I chose not to show the other six because this post is already too long with a lot of images and they woulf not be as useful to me.

 If you upload your GEDCOM file with families rather than just ancestors, you will get interestng descendant information. 

Thank you to Steve Little for making this fantastic desktop agent that is informative, visually pleasing and fun to work with. 

Now I'm wondering if my 75,169 person tree will be a real mess or be useful.  It would at least enable me to show Descendant views well.  It goes back 38 generations so perhaps it won't be much different since the agent at this time shows a maximum of 10 generations. 

If you try this out, please make comments below or write your own blog post.

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