Vibe-Coding My Family Tree: The Birth of Genealogix

Growing Up With 100 Cousins

My name is Robert, and I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, with my parents and brother. My parents were both born in Puerto Rico before World War II, and moved to New York in the 1960s. They both had relatives in (or near) New York City, and as typical children of Puerto Rican descent, my brother and I spent a lot of time with our uncles, aunts, and cousins. We were always aware that we had a large extended family. In fact, my brother and I used to count our first cousins, both those we actually met and those we never had. I remember us counting around 100 of them. We also made a game of naming all of our aunts and uncles - my mom was one of twelve.

Hitting the Brick Wall

My fascination with genealogy started back, without knowing what it was called. I always thought it was just a proud recollection of our living relatives. The first time I created a family tree was in school, probably in the 6th or 7th grade. Filling up my family tree to my great-grandparents was something to be proud of, but until that day, I didn't realize that most of my classmates could not go past their grandparents. Years later, my interest in genealogy became more serious. I created an account on Ancestry, built up my tree, and took a DNA test. I was absolutely hooked when my brick walls started to crumble. I met distant cousins I never knew existed. I created trees and DNA tests on other platforms. I tested my Y-DNA on Family Tree DNA. I traced my lineage back to Spain on multiple branches. But the more information I found, the more questions I had, and the more I realized I couldn't unlock every mystery hidden in my family tree without going to Puerto Rico and digging through the archives. This proved difficult for me because I was still working a full-time job. This sounded like something I could do many years from now when I retire, and I have a lot of time on my hands. After a few years of continuing my research and helping others start theirs, I started to slow my research down until eventually I stopped.

Sometime during these years, I received a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in Computer Science. I finally achieved my dream career as a software engineer, and then AI came into play. Artificial Intelligence was the shiny new toy in the technology field, and like so many others, I dove right in, fascinated by the possibilities. I watched videos about vibe-coding and came up with a few simple tools, but the wheels in my mind started to spin. What kind of project can I do to showcase my skills while working on something I'm genuinely interested in?

Vibe-coding the Future

Genealogix started as an experiment using Google AI Studio. I wanted to vibe-code a website that served a purpose that was interesting to me. It did a surprisingly good job. For those who are not familiar, vibe-coding is having AI do all the coding work based on your prompts (instructions). I saved my code on GitHub as a backup, and continued to add features to Genealogix until it made some serious errors. I switched away from Google AI Studio to using Visual Studio Code with GitHub Copilot for vibe-coding. I initially used Claude Sonnet 3.5 as a model, but more importantly, I used Gemini for ideation. Gemini 3 Pro had just come out, and it was great for bouncing ideas off it. It would give me details for a feature I wanted to implement, then I had Copilot actually do the work. This system is what I use in my current job, so I was familiar with the intricacies of this setup. The models I use constantly change as technology improves, and will continue to change. Who knows? In a few months, I may start using Cursor instead of VS Code and GitHub Copilot, or whatever is the next big thing.

What is Genealogix?

So what exactly is Genealogix? It's a website designed to make genealogy research easier with the help of AI. It is also an answer to the problem genealogists have had for decades - privacy. Whose data is it, really? Why are we renting our own family history on the big sites? I built Genealogix from the very beginning to solve this problem. How do we keep data away from the website servers? I think the approach I've taken when building this site resolves this, and we can discuss it in depth in another post. The website is a work in progress, and I hope serious genealogists can give it a chance and let me know what it's missing to be competitive, and if there is anything obviously broken. If you want to give it a try today, go to https://www.genealogix.ai.

I want to use this blog to go into detail on the coding choices I make for each feature, as well as discuss genealogy tips for those curious about how AI can help. Please join me on this journey with me. Hopefully, these blog posts will be as interesting to you as they will be to me.

Click the subscribe button to make sure you get notified when I drop the next installment. Thanks for giving Genealogix a try, keeping our family history in our own hands!