Chat with the book

You can ask the book questions in plain English — “When did John meet Anna?”, “Show me pages about the farm”, “Who is in the 1942 Christmas picture?” — and get an answer that draws from the captions, page text, and people in the book.

Opening the chat

Press Chat at the top of the book. A panel slides out on the right with a message area and an input box.

What to ask

The chat knows about the contents of this book and the people in it. Good things to ask:

• “Who are John’s siblings?”
• “Find pages about his army service.”
• “What happened in 1942?”
• “Read me the letter from page 120.”
• “Summarize the chapter on the farm years.”

Things it can’t do: make up facts that aren’t in the book, describe photographs it hasn’t been told about, or answer questions about other families’ books.

Staying on the book

The chat is here to help with this book — its pages, people, and family history. If you ask it to do something unrelated (write code, answer general trivia, and so on) it will politely steer back to the book. It will also decline messages that are abusive or inappropriate. Repeatedly sending such messages can disable chat for your account; if that happens, contact support to have it restored.

Sending a message

Type in the box and press Send or Enter. To type a multi-line message, use Shift+Enter. Answers appear as they’re written — if it’s going too long, press Stop to cut it off.

While the book is thinking

A status bar appears at the bottom of the chat showing what’s happening — “Thinking…”, “Searching pages…”, and so on. Some questions take a minute or two; the bar stays put until the answer is finished.

It’s safe to keep browsing the book while you wait — turning pages, opening the people directory, closing the chat panel, viewing past conversations, or starting a fresh chat won’t interrupt the answer. The response keeps coming in the background, and unread indicators show when an answer finishes away from view. Within the app, only the Stop button cancels a sent message. Closing or reloading the browser tab ends the network connection.

Links in answers

When the chat mentions a person or a page, those will be shown as links. Clicking a page number jumps you to that page. Clicking a person opens their directory profile.

New conversation vs. continuing

The + button starts a fresh chat — useful when you want to change topic. By default every new message continues the same conversation, so the book remembers what you asked earlier.

Past conversations

Press the notebook icon (📋) to browse every chat you’ve had with this book. Click one to reopen it and keep going.