A small Windows desktop app that reads a chapter from a Word document and generates a classical 4- or 5-generation pedigree (ancestor) chart as a PNG you can paste into your own writing.
Built for genealogists who have written their family history as prose ("X was born in 1850, married Y in 1872, and their children were 1. A, 2. B, ...") and want to turn it into the standard pedigree charts without re-typing everything by hand.
- Pick a Word
.docxfile - The app detects chapter headings and lets you pick one
- Anthropic's Claude reads the chapter and extracts a structured family tree
- Review the people the model found
- Pick a chart subject and how many generations to draw
- A PNG and a PDF chart are saved next to your Word document
- Windows 11 (the source also runs on macOS and Linux, but the prebuilt binary is Windows-only)
- An Anthropic API key — get one at console.anthropic.com
- A Word document in
.docxformat. If yours is an older.doc, open it in Word and use File → Save As to convert.
Prebuilt FaithChartMaker.exe binaries are attached to each release:
see the Releases tab. One-time SmartScreen warning the
first time you run an unsigned .exe — click More info → Run anyway.
See BUILD.md. On a Windows machine with Python 3.11+, you
double-click build_windows.bat and a single-file .exe lands in dist/.
See USAGE.md for plain-language instructions.
Genealogy software does pedigree charts well, but it expects you to enter each person manually through a form. If you've already written a prose family history — the way most family memoirs are written — that's a lot of re-typing. This app reads the prose directly and produces the chart.
| Step | Tech |
|---|---|
Read .docx |
python-docx |
| Detect chapters | Regex on Chapter N: and Part N: headings |
| Extract genealogy from prose | Claude Sonnet 4.6 via the Anthropic API |
| Render pedigree chart | matplotlib |
| GUI | tkinter (built into Python) |
Package as Windows .exe |
PyInstaller |
The LLM extraction prompt is in extract.py; it's tuned for the prose conventions a memoir-style chapter uses (numbered children, all-caps maiden names, remarriages, parenthetical date ranges).
Each chapter you read through the API costs roughly $0.02 – $0.10 depending on length (Sonnet 4.6 pricing, with prompt caching on the system prompt). A typical family memoir has 5–10 chapters; running the whole memoir once is in the same range as a cup of coffee. Set a monthly usage cap on the Anthropic console for safety.
MIT — see LICENSE.
Built originally to chart the Faith family from a memoir written by Andrew D. Faith. The tool is generic; the name reflects its origin, not a restriction on use.