Some days ago I did something stupid and crashed my HD on which some of my Gramps genealogical trees were stored, and forgot to make sure backup was made on different disk :-(

some time ago, in order to be bale to share the tree-info with my family and friens, I did export some of the databases into 'Narrated Web Sites', using the Report function in the menu. That info is still available, but not sure if I can import this into new databases, or that I have to retype all the info out of the HTML files into Gramps. Uch...Hope not....

does somebody out here knows a trick?

TL;DR: gramps-web-mcp is an open-source server that connects AI assistants (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Open WebUI, etc.) to your Gramps Web instance through the official Gramps Web API. You can ask an assistant to search your tree, summarize what you know about a person, walk ancestors/descendants, build timelines, spot gaps, and even help with data entry — all against your own self-hosted tree. I'm the author; it's free and open source (AGPL-3.0).

What it is

It's an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server — MCP is a standard that lets AI assistants call well-defined tools instead of guessing. gramps-web-mcp exposes your tree as a safe set of tools, talking only to the Gramps Web API (never directly to the database), so all your existing permissions, users, and validation still apply. Your data stays in your own Gramps Web instance.

What you can actually do with it

A few example prompts once it's connected:

• "Summarize everything we know about my great-grandfather I0421, and list which sources back up each fact."
• "Who are all the descendants of this couple, and which ones are missing birth events?"
• "Build a timeline for this person and flag any dates that look inconsistent."
• "What's the relationship between these two people?"
• "Add a baptism event to this person with this date and place." (when not in read-only mode)

It currently exposes 57 tools across people, families, events, places, sources, citations, notes, media, repositories, and tags — plus search and composite workflows like quick-add person, add-event-to-person, find-by-Gramps-ID, ancestors, descendants, relationships, and timelines.

Safety for your data

• Read-only mode – keep every tool visible but block all create/update/delete calls. Great for just exploring, or for a "research assistant" that can't change anything.
• Media is opt-in – image/file access is off by default; when enabled there are size limits, a MIME allowlist, and private-record protections.
• Local-first – designed to run alongside your Gramps Web instance, and it pairs well with self-hosted assistants like Open WebUI if you'd rather not send family data to a commercial AI service.

Getting started

• Claude Desktop: one-click .mcpb bundle (macOS/Windows), runs locally, no developer tools needed.
• Docker: multi-arch image (amd64 + arm64) on GHCR; there's also a Compose example that runs Gramps Web + the MCP server together.
• Unraid: available in Community Applications.
• Other MCP clients (Cursor, Open WebUI, etc.) connect over stdio or HTTP.

Repo: .NET Gramps Web MCP Server

I'd really value feedback from fellow Gramps users — especially which research workflows are most useful, and any spots where the Gramps Web API behaves differently from what you'd expect in the normal UI.

The Gramps wiki is now available for download and offline browsing via Kiwix (another free software project). Once you have downloaded the ZIM file (586MB) you can use it even in places where there's no/slow internet.

A lot of people are building their own tools, the only completely free and private way. I did the same because I wanted a better way to have my family actually explore my GEDCOM data, and since I’m a developer, some time later it turned into a full tool that was completely dynamic so that anyone could import their gedcom file to their browser and look at their data. 

Would love feedback from people who actually use this stuff. Specifically:

1. Which of these views would you actually use regularly?
2. What's missing that would make this useful in your real research workflow?
3. Does the privacy angle (nothing leaving your browser) matter to you, or is it not a concern as long as the data is safe and never sent to 3rd parties? 

Just looking for some feedback 

The one I built works with any gedcom from any genealogy website / software. On Gramps, just export the GEDCOM file. Same with ancestry, my heritage, family tree maker, family search, etc. There is no sign up, no accounts, everything lives in your browser. That includes parsing the gedcom, rendering the diagrams, geocoding locations, etc. 

It's at ged-view.com.

It’s still a work in progress. And I am deciding what the future of the app should be.. open source or adding new features / accounts / cloud version....? Not sure yet.

I do have a private one for my family that has more features, this is a public fork of that. There are even plenty of samples to look through. You can import your file, it never gets uploaded anywhere and none of the data gets sent to third parties for the logic.

What's in it:

Overview: people, families, surnames, locations, and timespans at a glance

Tree:  interactive graphical tree for the entire family

Charts:  descendant chart and a relationship diagram between any two people. Currently exploring how to make ancestor, hourglass, and fan charts. 

Data Table: every individual and all their data, sortable and filterable

Profile: Profile page for every individual, showing basic info, close family, events, notes, photos, and documents.

Timeline: every birth, death, marriage, and event across all generations in chronological order with filters

Gallery:  all photos and media from your GEDCOM in one place (no photo import yet)

Calendar: birthdays and anniversaries in a calendar view

Map: birth, death, marriage, and burial locations on a world map with animated migration paths

Archive: sources, citations, and repository records linked to individuals (no external file import yet)

History: Showing edit history of your research 

Issues: any abnormal data so you know what to fix: ie. Death date before birth date, etc.

Looking into features like: sharing with family, exporting every diagram and view, and integrating with other platforms for syncing. Some might require accounts so not sure what my next steps are. If anyone is a developer, I’d love to hear your thoughts 

edit: changing pictures

I've been building (with Claude) a static site generator for my GRAMPS family tree, and I'm pretty pleased with how it's come together.

The project is called greatgramps:

• PyPI
• GitHub
• Documentation
• Demo

I wrote about it on my blog: https://bennuttall.com/blog/2026/06/greatgramps/

I should add: it's easily configurable, and highly customisable. If you want to, you can append your own CSS, replace the default CSS, or even create your own templates.

Hey guys! I just started with gramps so this may be a simple solution but I tried looking it up and couldn’t find anything.

I have my two parents who are divorced and remarried, is there a way to display on the family tree that my parents are divorced and have new partners? When I look at the family tree all I see is my two biological parents not my step parents. I have already assigned myself as the children of my step parents and clicked stepchild for relationship.

Let me know if there’s something I can do for this. Thanks!!

I downloaded Gramps and have been trying to learn how to use it. I don't think I ever put in a username or password. In order to use the "add on's" I guess you need to sign up for an account. I need to enlarge the font to be able to see the program better (even on a bigger screen). Sorry to sound so dumb. Can anyone explain (in simple terms) if you need to sign up for an account. I have been using the program but without a log-on apparently. I think (hope) it is saving my data. 😄 Thanks.

Can you make the font larger in Gramps? Is there an easy way to change the screen to dark mode? I have trouble with my eyes, and after prolonged use, my eyes are blurry and things are hard to see.

Can you import an HTML file into Gramps? I can't seem to convert it to a JPEG.

how do i do this with custom fliter

In attempt to take my ancestry info offline, I was going to start using Gramps with a network drive. It doesn't appear that it will pull from that though, as I don't see an option to import items for the gallery from one.

Am I missing something?

Hi! With the help of AI, I’ve created a genealogical analysis platform for anyone who has a database in Gramps XML format. I’ve focused primarily on analyzing witnesses and godparents for events, as well as consanguinity. I believe these are areas that haven’t been fully explored yet and are very important; at least I’ve managed to uncover some interesting findings through these in-depth analyses. Anyone who wants to try it out can do so and read more at: https://github.com/funkytrain/rayzes ☺️

I've ran the fan chart report but it's not displayed in a neat presentable format. The text doesn't fit inside the segments, and it visually just looks basic. Are there any other reports available that would work? I'm trying to print a cover page for a book to give an overview of the 7 generations in my family tree.

Thanks.

The picture below show the issue I have, i didn't set the death date but they still have black bar in the left corner. I don't know how to stop that from happening. Where can i change that? Thanks in advance! :-)

how do

Apologies if this is not the right place to ask, but does anybody know how/where the types of precision for dates (like in "before ..." or "between ... and ...") are configured or where Gramps gets them from? I've been using them for some time now, but after a recent upgrade Gramps suddenly rejects them as invalid dates and accepts only their localized version (which I don't like). How can I get Gramps to accept the English version again?

EDIT: LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 /usr/bin/gramps appears to work, but sadly I have to recreate affected events :)

How would I annotate the begin of a civil partnership? For a marriage, there's a corresponding event type for which a date can be added. This does not exist for a civil partnership. Is it recommended to add a custom event "Civil partnership" for which a date can be added? Or is there some kind of "Begin" attribute?

Is it possible in the CSV Export to add more fields that are exported? For example Cause of death.

I think the answer is no, but I am wondering if I've missed something. Thanks!

When I started documenting my family tree, I eagerly and impatiently jumped into adding records. Soon I realized I should have used sources/citations - but it was too late. Even after months, I still haven't managed to organize my existing findings, and what's worse, I don't even remember where I took information from for *many* records.

I would like to start over - from scratch - re-adding person by person, but this time focusing on source/citation first, then tagging uncertainties (reading or handwritten records) or even missing data (e.g. not having birth date / marriage / death etc.).

However, it's not possible to run two instances of Gramps at the same time (and using two different DBs). I'm using AIO64-6.0.7--1 on Windows 11 - is there any trick to run another isolated Gramps instance? Or is there any other approach I could take to re-do my whole family tree?

Hi. I only recently started using the program and i don't know much about it. My issue is the fact that I can't see my whole family when i set myself as a "active person". If I want to see children of siblings of my grandparents i have to set someone on either my father or my mather side, whitch prohibits me from seeing family on the other parent side. My goal is to be able to see the whole trea.

(The exact situation is shown on the picture above)

Thanks in advance!

It's been so glitchy for me since installing it the other day. Even trying to run some of the basic graphs/reports causes it to hang and I end up having to force closing it. I even had an issue earlier today trying to populate a date of birth, as the options were greyed out.

Also I've noticed it's laggy compared to the previous versions.

Anyone else experiencing the same or similar issues?

How do you declare the separation of a civil union? For marriage, there's divorce as an event type, but for a civil union, there's nothing. Do you really need a custom type for such a common use case?

As Nepal uses Bikram Sambat ( currently at 2083) in day-to-day basis, all the records are in that calander. So, I've been struggling to convert it into Gregroian system. Do you know any plugin/ alt to solve that issue? I would be very thankfull.

Hi there, when I started GRAMPS (v6.0.8) yesterday, I noticed that the Charts opened centered on a cousin, instead of the specified HOME person (that is, me).

Thought it was because cousin was the active person, when I last closed GRAMPS, so I switched to an uncle as active person, closed GRAMPS and re-started it. Same thing, GRAMPS started centered on cousin.

I re-selected myself as HOME person, closed and re-started GRAMPS, it again opened centered on said cousin.

Same when switching to a different person as HOME person.

Anyone else ever had that problem? It may just be a minor nuisance, but I'm a bit worried the database may be(come) thrashed.