A tree shown in search can appear in search results for signed-in users. Search results only show the tree name and short description. The private people, relationships, stories, and media inside the tree stay private.

Tree Managers can switch a tree between Shown in search and Hidden from search from the dashboard tree settings. Existing members keep access if a tree is later hidden from search.

Start with the first person already shown in the tree. Click their card to open the editor, fill in the details you know, then use Add Relationship to attach close relatives.

1. Click a person card in the tree.
2. Add names, gender, years, places, notes, stories, or photos.
3. Choose Add Relationship and pick father, mother, spouse, son, or daughter.
4. Click the new relative's card and repeat the same steps.

A Tree Manager can assign a task to someone who is already in the tree, send a collaborator invite by email, or create a private task invite link to share through Messages, Messenger, email, or another family channel.

If the task is sent to someone who is not in the tree yet, they accept the Tree Manager invitation first. Then they can open the task and work in the right part of the tree.

AI Family Guide is built into Hmong Family Tree. In Explore mode, you can ask questions about the shared tree record, including people, relationships, stories, memories, media, Family Updates, family history, and profile fields.

Explore mode is read-only. It can answer from the family record, but it does not change people, relationships, media, settings, or access.

When Build mode is enabled for your account and your role allows it, AI Family Guide can help organize what you know into a proposed tree update. The live tree still changes only after a Tree Manager reviews and approves the proposal.

An AI chatbot mostly answers questions in a conversation. It can help you think through family details, write notes, or organize what you already know, but it usually does not take actions in another app by itself.

An AI agent can take a task and use tools to work on it. For Hmong Family Tree, that means the agent can open the invite link, read the tree data it is allowed to see, ask follow-up questions, answer from the tree archive, or send a proposed tree update back for Tree Manager review when it has Build access.

A simple way to tell the difference: a chatbot helps you write or reason, while an agent can also use tools, visit links, make web requests, and return work or answers from the app data it is allowed to access.

Tested agents include GitHub Copilot coding agent, Codex, and OpenClaw. Claude Code, Cursor Agent, Windsurf Cascade, Gemini CLI, Replit Agent, and similar coding agents should also work when they have web access and permission to make HTTP requests.

A compatible agent needs to open the invite link, read the tree data it is allowed to see, and either answer questions from that tree data or submit a proposal back to Hmong Family Tree. Some tools require link access, browser access, or external network access to be enabled first.

Regular chatbots may not work as agents. If the assistant cannot open the invite link or cannot make authenticated web requests, it can still help you write notes, but it may not be able to join the tree, answer from the archive, or submit a proposal automatically.

Use the built-in AI Family Guide when you want to ask plain language questions about the tree. Use an external Build helper when you have a lot of people to add, when you want to talk through family details out loud or in writing, or when you have rough notes that need to be organized into parents, spouses, children, clans, dates, places, and notes.

Use an Explorer helper when the tree already has a lot of information and you want to ask questions like who served in the military, which relatives were doctors, what stories mention a move from China into Laos, or what memories were approved for a specific elder.

An agent can make family tree building feel more like a conversation and less like a long session of clicking fields and typing names one by one. This can be especially helpful when you are working through a large family tree with many branches, households, and relationships.

This is especially helpful when building a tree from memory. You can tell the agent, for example, "Start with my parents and siblings," or "Ask me about my father's brothers and sisters one by one."

1. Open a family tree you can access with a Premium account.
2. Open Review & Access, then use the Agents tab.
3. Name the agent invite, such as Codex or Claude Code.
4. Choose Help build the tree or Answer questions, depending on what you want the agent to do.
5. Choose Create setup for my agent.
6. Copy the prompt and paste it into your agent.
7. Wait for the app to show that the agent joined, then keep talking with the agent.

The prompt tells the agent how to enter the tree, what it is allowed to do, and what it should avoid. You do not need to write technical instructions yourself.

Help build the tree is for Tree Managers because it can submit proposals. Answer questions is read-only and follows your current access to that family tree.

For a Build helper, tell the agent facts the same way you would explain them to a relative helping with the tree. Good details include full names, Hmong names, clan or last name, gender, birth or death years, birthplaces, current places, spouses, parents, children, and anything uncertain.

For an Explorer helper, ask questions about what is already in the tree. You can ask about names, occupations, years, places, life stories, notes, approved memories, published Family Updates, family history, and media filenames.

No. A Build helper can submit a proposal only. A proposal is a draft suggestion. The live family tree does not change until a Tree Manager reviews and approves it.

An Explorer helper is even more limited. It can only read the shared family record and answer questions. It cannot submit proposals, approve access, manage members, edit people, or change the tree.

This review step matters because family records should not depend on guesses. The agent should help organize what you know, but a trusted human should still confirm names, relationships, and sensitive details before they become part of the tree.

The agent can read the shared family tree data needed for the job you chose. That can include people, names, Hmong names, dates, places, occupations, notes, life stories, media filenames, published Family Updates, family history, and approved memories. It cannot manage members, invite relatives, approve access requests, merge proposals, change Tree Manager settings, or directly edit the published tree.

Treat the agent like a temporary helper with access to family information. Only invite an agent you trust, and avoid sharing details that your family would not want processed by that agent.

Agent invites expire after 7 days. Tree Managers can also revoke an invite earlier from the Agents tab in the Collaboration Hub. Revoking an invite stops that agent token from being used again.

Already submitted proposals remain in the review queue, so Tree Managers can still approve or reject them after the invite expires or is revoked.

Read the proposal carefully before merging it. Check that each person belongs in the tree, names are spelled correctly, relationships are connected to the right parents, spouses, and children, and uncertain information is marked clearly.

If something looks wrong or incomplete, reject the proposal and ask the agent or a relative to clarify. It is better to leave a detail unfinished than to add a confident-looking mistake.

Use the profile photo area for a person's main avatar. Use Media for extra memories and records attached to that person. Free accounts can add up to 5 photos per person.

Premium accounts include 50GB total media storage across the account for photos, PDFs, audio, and video. Supported image types include JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, and HEIF. Premium also supports PDF documents, MP3, M4A, WAV, and WebM audio, plus MP4, MOV, and WebM video. Premium media limits are 50 MB for images and PDFs and 250 MB for audio. Videos count toward your 50GB storage limit and must fit within your remaining storage.

Tree Managers are responsible for the whole tree. They can edit any person directly, invite people, review join and access requests, grant or revoke branch suggestion access, review and merge proposals, manage invitations, export data, restore backups, and promote or demote other Tree Managers except the original Tree Manager.

Regular members do not directly change the live family tree. A member can only change the tree if a Tree Manager promotes them to Tree Manager. A collaborator can suggest branch changes, but those suggestions stay in a proposal until a Tree Manager approves and merges them.

Tree Managers are also the gatekeepers for family access. They should only approve people they recognize, can verify from the request details, or trust through someone who can vouch for them. If a request does not provide enough context, the Tree Manager should reject it or ask for more information before granting access.

The Collaboration Hub is the Tree Manager workspace for access and review. Open it from Tools, then use the tabs to manage members, access requests, pending proposals, invitations, and agent invites without leaving the tree.

Family trees contain private family information: relationships, names, photos, stories, and sometimes sensitive history. One mistaken edit can change how everyone sees the tree.

For that reason, direct editing is limited to Tree Managers. Members can view the tree, and trusted collaborators can suggest branch changes, but Tree Managers review and approve those suggestions before they become part of the live tree.

The goal is to protect privacy, keep the family record accurate, and make sure someone trusted is responsible for who enters the tree and what changes are accepted.

Members can open and read a tree after they are invited or approved. A member does not automatically get management or editing powers.

Members cannot directly edit the live family tree. They cannot add people, change relationships, edit profiles, upload person media, invite other people, approve requests, grant branch access, merge proposals, export data, restore backups, or change another person's role.

If a member should help improve a branch, a Tree Manager can give them collaborator access for that branch. Even then, the member is suggesting changes only. A Tree Manager must approve and merge the proposal before the live tree changes.

A collaborator is a member with suggestion access to one branch, such as one person and their descendants. Collaborators work in a draft proposal and submit their suggested changes for Tree Manager review. Collaborators do not directly change the live tree. Their changes do not become part of the main tree until a Tree Manager approves and merges them.

A viewer has read-only access. Viewers can open and read the tree, but they cannot edit people, add relatives, remove relationships, upload person media, create branch proposals, or manage access.

A scope grant lets a member suggest changes for one branch of the tree, usually one person and their descendants. This is useful when a relative knows their own branch well but should not edit or manage the entire family tree.

Scope grants do not give direct edit power. The collaborator makes changes in a proposal, submits it, and waits for a Tree Manager to review and merge or reject the changes. Until that happens, the live family tree does not change.

Tree Managers can grant or revoke branch suggestion access from the Members tab. Removing a scope grant stops future suggestions for that branch, but it does not remove the person's basic member access unless their tree access is separately removed.

Use the Invitations tab to send access to specific email addresses. A single invite can be for a viewer or for a collaborator with branch suggestion access. Bulk invitations are viewer-only, so use one trusted email at a time when you need to grant collaborator access.

Invitations expire after the number of days you choose. Tree Managers can review sent invitations and revoke invitations that are old, mistaken, or no longer appropriate.

A person who can vouch for you is a family member or trusted relative who can confirm who you are and how you connect to the family tree. They do not automatically approve your request, but they give the Tree Manager someone familiar to check with.

Use the name of someone the Tree Manager is likely to recognize, ideally someone already in the tree or close to the branch you are asking to join. If you are not sure who to name, include your father's name, grandfather's name, and a short message explaining your family connection.

Be specific. Include your name, how you connect to the family, father or grandfather names when helpful, who can vouch for you, and what you want to correct or add. That gives Tree Managers enough context to decide whether to approve access.

The person vouching for you should ideally already be in the family tree. That gives the Tree Manager a known family member they can message or call to confirm whether you should be accepted into the tree.

Review the requester's name, father, grandfather, voucher, account identity, and message. The request should give enough context for the Tree Manager to recognize the person or verify them through a known family member.

If the request includes someone who can vouch for them, that person should ideally already be in the tree. The Tree Manager can message or call that known relative before approving access.

Approving tree access makes the requester a member. Approving a branch suggestion request grants collaborator access for that branch only. If the request is vague, suspicious, or cannot be verified, reject it or ask the person for more information outside the app before approving.

The proposal goes to the Tree Managers for review. A Tree Manager can inspect the suggested changes, reject the proposal, or merge the approved changes into the main tree. The live tree changes only when a Tree Manager merges the proposal.

The Pending Proposals tab shows proposal counts by status and opens the proposal queue. Submitted proposals are ready for Tree Manager review. Draft proposals are still being worked on by the collaborator.

Open Settings, find Export your data, and use Export archive for each owned tree you want to keep. The Delete account dialog also reminds you to export first. These downloads are ZIP files, not just raw JSON files.

Each archive includes tree.json, a manifest.json, and available media files attached to people in that tree. Media files are grouped under a media/ folder by person and can include photos, images, PDFs, audio files, and video files that are still present in storage.

If a media object can no longer be found in storage, the archive skips that file and lists it in manifest.json. Shared trees only appear in this export list when you are an active owner of that tree.

Open Settings, choose Manage billing, and cancel through the Stripe billing portal. A normal cancellation stops future renewals. Premium access usually stays active until the end of the paid billing period.

When Premium access ends, owned tree archive exports remain available from Settings. If your account has Premium-only media, such as PDFs, audio, video, or photos beyond the Free limit, you have 30 days to export owned tree archives before that Premium-only media may be deleted from storage. Upgrading again before the deadline keeps the media archive active.

You can request a refund within 30 days of your first Premium purchase from Settings. The request goes to an admin for review. If it is approved, the refund is processed through Stripe back to the original payment method and Premium access ends immediately.

Renewal payments are generally not refundable through the standard 30-day window. If you do not want to renew, cancel Premium from Manage billing before the next billing date.

Review & Access opens the Collaboration Hub, the Tree Manager workspace for members, access requests, proposals, family memory submissions, memorial requests, and invitations. It is where Tree Managers decide who gets into the family tree, what each member can do, and what submitted content becomes visible to the family.

Viewers and collaborators may see fewer options because Tree Managers control access and approvals. For the full workflow, see What is the Collaboration Hub?

Export Tree in the tree Tools menu lets Tree Managers download the current tree as a JSON file. Export is useful when you want an offline copy, need to move data, or want to inspect the raw Family Chart data format.

This Tools export is JSON only. To download a ZIP archive that includes both tree data and media files, use Export your data in Settings.

Backups are created automatically before important changes, such as the first manual edit of the day, imports, proposal merges, risky deletes, and restores. The app keeps the 25 most recent backups for each tree.

Premium Tree Managers can open Restore Backups, choose an earlier version, and restore it. Before restore, the app saves the current state so the manager can return to it if needed. Restoring also closes open proposals so old suggested changes do not get merged into the wrong version of the tree.

From the Family Trees dashboard, choose Import Tree and upload a .json file. The file must be under 5 MB and use the Family Chart format: a top-level array of people, where each person has an id, a data object, and a rels object.

In plain English, a JSON file is a structured text file that apps use to pass information around. For Hmong Family Tree, it is just a file that lists people and how they are connected, so the app can rebuild the tree without you typing every person by hand.

[
  {
    "id": "father",
    "data": {
      "gender": "M",
      "first name": "Chue",
      "last name": "Yang",
      "birth year": 1962
    },
    "rels": {
      "parents": [],
      "spouses": ["mother"],
      "children": ["daughter"]
    }
  },
  {
    "id": "mother",
    "data": {
      "gender": "F",
      "first name": "Mai",
      "last name": "Yang",
      "birth year": 1965
    },
    "rels": {
      "parents": [],
      "spouses": ["father"],
      "children": ["daughter"]
    }
  },
  {
    "id": "daughter",
    "data": {
      "gender": "F",
      "first name": "Nia",
      "last name": "Yang",
      "birth year": 1992
    },
    "rels": {
      "parents": ["father", "mother"],
      "spouses": [],
      "children": []
    }
  }
]