What Heartwood does today, and where it's going.
Preview software, honestly labeled: what you can rely on today, and what's still being built. Nothing in the roadmap section exists yet, and we don't announce dates.
Here now in the current release
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Bring your tree in, keep everything
Import your GEDCOM file. Your original is kept byte-for-byte, existing citations come with it, and anything we couldn't place is itemized for you rather than quietly discarded.
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Evidence stays visible
Sources, citations, and open conflicts live on the person they concern — built on the Genealogical Proof Standard. See how Heartwood thinks about proof.
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Bring your own AI, with a review gate
Connect the AI assistant you already use. Every evidence claim it captures waits beside its source until you confirm it — and a full activity log shows exactly what it did. The Review screen groups pending claims by source and offers Accept all N above within each group; Heartwood deliberately has no accept-everything action across unrelated sources.
Your own GEDCOM import is different: it lands directly usable, with no re-confirmation step. The review gate applies to what AI produces, not to the tree you brought.
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Restorable backups and portable GEDCOM exports
A scheduled backup is a manifest-verified copy Heartwood can restore into a new tree. A GEDCOM export is for interchange: GEDCOM 7 in the app, or 5.5.1 through the local API, with a loss report for anything the chosen format cannot carry. Automated import, export, validation, and re-import tests guard the round trip without pretending the two formats can represent everything equally.
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Proof arguments and research plans
Research questions, plans, logs, and proof arguments are part of the current evidence workflow, alongside citations and visible conflicts.
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Built for toolmakers too
A documented local API and MCP tools expose the same local service the app uses. These integration surfaces are Preview during beta, so their shapes can change. Read the docs.
Inside the workbench
Real Heartwood screens, captured with synthetic sample data.
On the roadmap being designed and built
Roughly the order we expect to tackle it.
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Guided citation templates
Guided citation entry that feeds proof arguments, not just formatting.
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Deeper evidence correlation
More guided ways to correlate indirect and conflicting evidence across records and people.
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Explainable, conservative merge
Duplicate detection that never destroys information — every merge stays provenanced and reviewable.
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Sync & collaboration
Optional multi-device sync and sharing. Any future paid hosted collaboration will be opt-in; Heartwood Desktop and every offline feature remain free permanently and never require it. The privacy policy will cover any hosted option in full before it ships.
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Charts, reports & books
Pedigree and descendant charts and narrative output, connected to the evidence behind each statement.
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Places & maps
Hierarchy-true places with historical jurisdictions, preserved through import and export.
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Media that can't break
Photo and document storage with duplicate detection and no broken links, ever.
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DNA as evidence
Structured match tracking, in the same proof workflow as documentary evidence.
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Search & hints
Search across everything you've gathered; hints you choose to follow, never fetched on your behalf.