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Connect Claude or another MCP assistant to your family tree

Draw My Tree speaks the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that lets AI assistants and other tools connect to apps. Connect an MCP-compatible assistant and it can read your tree, search for people, and help you record sourced findings, all scoped to your own account.

MCP is a standard, not a single product. Any client that supports remote MCP servers can connect: AI chats, IDE extensions, and command-line tools among them.

What an assistant can do

Once connected, the assistant has a set of family-tree tools:

  • Read and search: fetch a tree, look up a person with their events and media, or search people by name.
  • Walk relationships: list ancestors or descendants, find the relationship path between two people, or their closest common ancestor.
  • Build timelines: assemble a chronological view for one person or the whole tree.
  • Find gaps: scan for missing dates, places, parents, events, or sources.
  • Record sourced findings: add or update people, attach citations, and log dated events such as census, burial, or marriage records.
  • Import and export: bring in a GEDCOM or JSON file, or export your tree.

A worked example

A list of tools is hard to picture. This is what a short session looks like: finding what is missing, then recording one sourced fact against it.

You

Which people in my tree have the least recorded about them?

Assistanttree_get_research_gaps

Twenty-three people have gaps. The thinnest are Margaret Ellery (no birth date, no birth place, no parents, no sources) and her husband John (no death date, no sources). Margaret is where I would start: with no parents recorded, the line stops at her.

You

I found her in the 1900 census in Plattsburgh, New York. Born March 1856, living with John and three children. Record it.

Assistanttree_record_finding

Recorded. Birth date March 1856 and birth place New York on Margaret, a census event dated 1900 at Plattsburgh, Clinton County, and the census attached as a source. Her story now reads "…born in New York in March 1856 [1900 census](cite:…)", so the claim links to the record it came from.

Two things worth noticing. Nothing was guessed — every fact written came from the record you handed over, and the assistant reported exactly what it changed. And the citation is a real link inside the story, not a note beside it, so in a year the claim can still be traced to the census page it came from.

It can also be wrong. It writes with your permissions, so treat what it records the way you would treat an edit from a relative you gave access to: worth reading before you rely on it.

Before you start

  • A Draw My Tree account on an active plan; the assistant works on your cloud-stored trees, which paid plans provide.
  • An MCP client that supports remote (HTTP) servers with sign-in. Many assistants now do; check your client's connector or integrations settings.

Connect your assistant

Copy the server URL below, then add it as a custom connector in your client. The chat buttons open the right settings page for you; Cursor and VS Code install in one click.

Server URL

https://api.drawmytree.com/v1/mcp

Open in an AI chat

Each button copies the URL and opens that client's connectors settings. Add a custom connector, paste the URL, and sign in with your Draw My Tree account.

Most chats need a paid plan to add a custom connector. ChatGPT additionally requires turning on Developer Mode (Settings → Connectors → Advanced), available on its paid plans only.

Coding tools

Cursor and VS Code install in one click from these links.

Add to CursorAdd to VS Code

Doing it by hand instead? In your client, add a new remote (HTTP) MCP server; some clients call this a "custom connector"; paste the URL above, and sign in with your Draw My Tree account when prompted. After it connects, the client lists the family-tree tools and you can start asking it to read or update your tree.

What the assistant can see

The connection is scoped to your account and carries your permissions; nothing more. The assistant can read and change the same trees you can, so treat it like giving someone access to your account. To cut it off, remove the connector in your MCP client.

Working with sources

When the assistant records a fact, ask it to cite where the fact came from. Its tools are built to attach a source link and any dated records alongside the claim, so each addition keeps its provenance. A finding with no source is a claim you can't trace later.