Digital Family Tree
My maternal grandmother compiled a genealogy of our family in the 90s, going back to the 1600s. This year my paternal grandmother passed away, and as I was going through her old photos it just sort of hit me that none of my relatives seemed the sort to want to carry on the work that my maternal grandma did. The computer my grandma used to author the book is AFAIK lost, so I also didn't want the genealogy to be lost forever if we lose the physical copies, so I took my copy and digitized it. I first scanned all ~280 pages with the Google Drive mobile app document scanner. I fed that into Claude and asked it to begin a transcription effort. It launched a swarm of subagents to transcribe as much of it as it could, going back to me to retake bad images and clarify illegible text. Once I had it fully transcribed, I had it create a digital PDF version of the book, an mdbook site, a GEDCOM export, and now I'm having it build a website to interactively browse the family tree. Along the way I've gone back and had it clean up transcription or formatting errors. I plan on extending it with what I know and by asking my family and my wife's side of the family for more information.