As researchers, we often need to reference past research plans, reports, logs, documents, and locality guides. If you’ve done multiple phases for the same research question, you will have a lot of data to use moving forward. What if you had an AI assistant that could help you pull out specific information from your research and use it in various ways? If this sounds appealing, you can check out Projects on Claude.ai by Anthropic.

Like many of you, I experimented with AI when ChatGPT was officially launched by OpenAI in November of 2022. It was entertaining to explore as a Large Language Model (LLM), but too many hallucinations in the responses made it impractical for genealogical research. Fast forward to the summer of 2024, when I decided it was time to dig in and see what AI could do for me as a serious researcher. The LLMs had vastly improved, and after taking Steve Little’s AI Institute Course through the GRIP Genealogy Institute, I better understood what AI could and couldn’t do and how best to approach using it for genealogy.

I learn best by doing, so I did a complete project about my ancestor, Isabelle (Weatherford) Royston, using AI, and wrote a six-part blog series on each step of the research process. During the project, I experimented with four different LLMs: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. I upgraded to paid accounts for ChatGPT and Claude to test additional features. I settled on my favorite for my research endeavors – Claude 3.5 Sonnet because of the ability to create Projects.

With a professional plan, you can create as many Projects in Claude as you like, and I have created several.  If you cancel, you won’t be able to access your Projects, but they’ll be preserved, and if you decide to resubscribe in the future, you’ll regain access to your saved Projects. If you are actively researching year-round, you may want to keep your professional plan active, but if you take breaks throughout the year, you could certainly cancel for a few months. With those details out of the way, let’s look at how to create a Project in Claude.ai.

Creating a Project

Once you have subscribed to the Professional Plan with Claude.ai, you’ll see Projects appear on your home page and see the option to select a project or search projects. I have created several projects, and the two I’ve used the most lately are shown in the image below.

You can view all the projects you’ve created on the Projects page. From here, you can also create a new project. The first step is to name your project and describe what you are trying to achieve. For example, I set up a Project while working through my latest research session on Henderson Weatherford. I titled the project: Henderson Weatherford Research Project and gave it the following project description.

You are an expert genealogist. I am researching Henderson Weatherford using the following objective: Determine the parents of Henderson Weatherford, who was born about 1815 in Tennessee and died about 1861 in Dallas County, Texas. Henderson married Clemsy Cline in about 1838 in either Illinois or Arkansas.

Adding Project Knowledge

My next step was to begin adding project knowledge. As the project progresses, you can continue to add documents. A progress bar lets you gauge the project capacity and what you’ve used up. At any time, you can delete project knowledge that may be taking up too much space or is no longer necessary.

First, I added the timeline from my Airtable research log in a . CSV format and asked it to create a summary of known facts in a table format. Using that timeline, I  then asked Claude to write a narrative background for my research report using the timeline.

When my research was complete, I uploaded my research log as project knowledge so Claude could draw on my research to help me write the research report. When the report was completed, I also uploaded it as project knowledge.

I’ll tackle phase 2 of this project next, so I added two locality guides and my research project document to the project knowledge. These are Google Docs, and the ability to add Google Doc links was just announced. It is wonderful since I add to my guides and project documents while researching. This means that I won’t need to continue to upload updated documents. Instead, Claude syncs with my Google Drive and has access to any new information as soon as I add it.

Using Project Knowledge

Once you have set up a project and have begun adding research documents to work with, you can chat with Claude using the project knowledge. For example, my first step in the research process is to create the timeline in my Airtable research log.  I asked AI to use that timeline to create a table summarizing known facts. My Airtable timeline is very detailed, and I didn’t need every column represented in my summary; I just needed the basic facts.

Timeline for Henderson Weatherford in Airtable Research LogIt’s important to let the AI know the format you would like. In my first set of instructions, I neglected to mention the 3rd column of event details, so I continued chatting with the AI until I was happy with the table.

You can ask the AI for help with formatting, so I asked how to copy the table into a Word document or Google Doc, and it gave me options and instructions. I settled on having it provide the table in Markdown so the formatting would be preserved, and then I pasted it as Markdown into my Google Doc. To use Markdown in Google Docs, you first need to enable it by going to Tools> Preferences > Enable Markdown. To use Markdown in Microsoft Word, you can purchase the Writage plugin.

Using AI, I was able to create a beautiful table from my timeline very quickly. Because I provided Claude with my timeline, it brought the information in correctly.

As my project progressed, I continued to add to the project knowledge and chat with Claude, asking for help in writing the report, transcribing & analyzing deeds, and more. Each chat is named and I can return to any of them to continue that thread.

The Value of Using Projects

As researchers, we accumulate many pieces of data, and setting up a Project in Claude allows us to have a dedicated workspace for a specific research objective. We can add multiple pieces of project knowledge within the project, such as timelines, research logs, documents, reports, and more. The Project will have all our chats saved within that workspace, and we won’t have to hunt through past chats. Having more content knowledge will help Claude to provide better assistance and become our co-worker.

Best of luck in all your genealogy endeavors!