Heartwood
A free, local-first desktop research bench where your evidence — not your conclusions — is the primary object.
Heartwood is a free, local-first desktop genealogy research bench. Your evidence comes first, your own AI (Claude Desktop, or any local model you choose) is the research assistant via a local MCP daemon, and your data lives on your machine and your own cloud storage — never ours.
What it is
- Free. No subscriptions, no entitlement tiers, no accounts.
- Local-first. Your genealogical data stays on your machine and in the cloud storage you already own (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox). We do not host it.
- Closed source, with a documented local API. The app itself is closed source, but the daemon exposes a documented local API — the same surface the app's own AI features use — so any tool or any large language model you choose can build on your data, on your machine.
- Bring your own AI. Connect Claude Desktop, or any MCP-capable local model, over a local, loopback-only connection. Your evidence never leaves your machine except to the model you personally chose.
Trust, structurally
AI-origin content lives in a visibly distinct pending lane and cannot feed proof arguments, exports, or shared research until you have reviewed and confirmed it against the source. AI can't put anything in your tree without you seeing it.