Frameworks - Chronicle Makers

Research with AI

The Making Log: The Running Record of How You Work a Research Problem

A Making Log: dated entries recording what a family historian set out to find, what they did, what AI did, and what they kept, for one ancestor research project.

Research with AI

Research Brain: Your Research and Your Thinking, in One Folder

A Research Brain is the project folder for one research project: your records, your brain dump and your Making Log, kept where your AI tool can read them.

Woodcut image of a hand holding a historical document.

Research with AI

The Find/Work Test: Why AI Invents Records for Family Historians

AI invents records because of the request, not the tool. The Find/Work Test is one question family historians ask first: find something, or work on it?

Woodcut image of five books sitting on a shelf, each with a different cover and design.

Writing with AI

The Forms of Family History Writing

Try the Five Forms exercise to see which style of family history writing you drift towards. The chronicle is the sixth form and a new one for family historians.

Woodcut image of a fountain pen with green ink correcting a handwritten page.

Writing with AI

AI as Your Writing Coach for Family History

AI can coach the family history you have already written, without writing a word of it for you. What a coaching pass returns and why it works.

Three woodcut letter blocks of the letters AIM with a wood chisel and shavings in front of it.

Research with AI

The AIM Framework: How Family Historians Stay in Charge of AI Research

AIM is the Chronicle Makers method for working with AI on family history research: Assess, Interact, Measure. It replaces "trust but verify."

A wood cut image of a kitchen pantry shelf, well stocked, with jars, tins, sacks

Writing with AI

The Full Pantry Problem and How It Keeps You Stuck

You have enough to write. The Full Pantry Problem is the gap between having enough and believing it, and it hits the best-researched family historians hardest.

Woodcut of a workbench holding an unfinished hourglass and a scatter of shavings — the Making Process is the record of how a family history got written.

Frameworks

The Making Process: The Path From Your Records to a Finished Chronicle

Your making process is the path from the records you found to the chronicle your family reads. Documenting it as you work is the practice.

Woodcut image of a boundary marker and surveyors equipment on a cleared ground.

Frameworks

The Soundness Standard: When Family History Research on an Ancestor Is Finished

The Soundness Standard defines when research on one ancestor is finished: searched to the records that exist, written down, honestly defensible.

Wood cut image of a magnifying class with a check mark in the middle.

Frameworks

The Research Quality Check: How to Know Your Research Is Ready to Become a Story

The Research Quality Check is the five-check standard family historians run on their research before writing an ancestor's story.

Wood cut image of a computer with a family tree on the screen, then an arrow, then a family history book on the right.

Frameworks

The Finisher Framework: Why Most Family History Projects Stall (and How to Change That)

The Finisher Framework: the identity shift from genealogy researcher to someone who finishes family history stories. Built for people with years of research and nothing written.

STORI letterpress block letters in vintage woodcut style — the five-step chronicle writing method by Chronicle Makers

Writing with AI

What Is the STORI Method? The Five-Step Process for Writing Family History

The STORI Method is a five-step process for turning genealogy research into a finished family history story. Scope, Thread, Originate, Reflect, Inspire.