Month: September 2025

RootsMagic 11 introduces a brand-new feature that makes working with artificial intelligence easier and more productive: the AI Prompt Builder.

At its heart, the Prompt Builder isn’t AI running inside RootsMagic or trying to tell you how to use the program. Instead, it’s a practical toolkit that helps you create better prompts—well-structured instructions that you can copy into any AI service. RootsMagic now gives you a way to create those instructions quickly and reuse them whenever you like.

Watch the Video

How It Works

When you open the AI Prompt Builder, you’ll see a library where your saved prompts are stored. At first it will be empty, but it won’t take long before you begin filling it with instructions tailored to your own needs. Each prompt can be as simple or as detailed as you want.

If you are comfortable writing your own AI prompts, there’s a free-form editor where you can give your prompt a name, type out the request you want to make, and then decide which details about the selected person in RootsMagic should be included—names, events, and even relatives like parents, siblings, spouses, and children.

For everyone else, the guided “Build a Prompt” option acts like a step-by-step wizard. You select the role you want AI to play, the task you want it to perform, and the audience you want it written for. You can even set a maximum length, ask for historical context, or check the box to keep the AI from making up details. At the end, RootsMagic assembles the entire prompt for you. All you have to do is give it a name and save it.

Examples in Action

The video shows how flexible this can be. In one demonstration, RootsMagic creates a prompt that asks the AI to build a word search puzzle for a family reunion. The program automatically includes the ancestor’s name, key events, and basic family relationships in the prompt. Once copied into ChatGPT, the AI produces not only the puzzle grid but also a word list drawn from the family data.

In another example, a different ancestor is selected, and the guided builder is used to generate a prompt for a narrative biography. The prompt includes the genealogical details from RootsMagic along with the request to add historical context, but without inventing any fictional stories. The result is a concise family history piece that can be shared at reunions or added to personal archives.

Managing Your Prompt Library

As you continue to experiment, you’ll likely build a growing collection of prompts. RootsMagic makes it simple to manage them. You can edit a prompt if you decide to change its wording or the data it includes, duplicate one to create a similar variation, or delete the ones you no longer need. And whenever you want to use a prompt, it’s just a matter of highlighting it and copying it to the clipboard. From there, you paste it into your favorite AI service and let the engine do the work.

Smarter Prompts, Better Results

Many genealogists worry about AI “making things up,” and rightly so. That’s why RootsMagic gives you the choice of including or excluding certain details, and provides a built-in option to tell AI not to invent information. Combined with the ability to reuse your best prompts again and again, the AI Prompt Builder helps ensure that your interactions with AI are focused, reliable, and truly useful.

By itself, RootsMagic doesn’t generate the narrative or puzzle—it equips you with the best possible prompt so that when you hand it off to an AI, you get results that are meaningful and accurate. It’s a smarter way to take advantage of these new tools without giving up control of your family history.

Learn more and try RootsMagic 11 today →

If you’ve used RootsMagic for any length of time, you know how much time is spent on the Edit Person screen—adding new details, updating information, and organizing sources and notes. With RootsMagic 11, we’ve made big changes to this screen so that data entry is faster, less “clicky,” and much more intuitive.

In this video we demonstrate the redesigned Edit Person screen and show how these updates can make your everyday work more efficient.

A New Way to Work with Notes, Sources, and Tasks

Three new views on the Edit Person form—Notes, Sources, and Tasks—give you a broader view of a person’s information and let you edit it right where you see it.

Instead of clicking through multiple panels, the Notes view now displays every possible note connected to a person: general notes, event notes, family notes, name notes, and even associations. You can quickly see which items already have notes, edit them inline, and use a search box to instantly filter down to the exact text you’re looking for.

The Sources view works in a similar way. All of a person’s citations appear together in one list, where they can be edited on the spot. You can filter citations by fact or family, attach new citations exactly where they belong, and even drag-and-drop to reorder them. That order is respected in reports, making it easier to keep your documentation organized the way you want it.

Tasks now share this streamlined approach too. You can view every task tied to a person, whether it’s linked to a fact, a name, or an association, and edit them directly in the list without extra steps.

Clearer Visual Cues for Proof and Privacy

RootsMagic 11 also brings clarity to fact status icons. Private facts are now marked with a lock symbol, and proof statuses are easier to distinguish: proven facts show a green check, disproven facts display a circle with a slash, and disputed facts carry an exclamation mark.

A brand-new proof option—Proposed—adds flexibility for genealogists working with theories or hypotheses. Proposed facts are marked with a puzzle-piece icon, signaling that the information is tentative but worth tracking.

A Header That Does More

At the top of the Person page sidebar, the updated header now shows live counts for a person’s notes, sources, media, tasks, health items, and DNA tests. If an item doesn’t exist, the icon will be grayed.

These counts are not just informative; they’re interactive. Click any icon to jump straight to the relevant edit view for the person, or expand the header to see the actual numbers listed beside each category. This makes it easy to scan your tree and quickly spot where more information might be needed.

Editing Made Easier

Together, these improvements turn RootsMagic 11’s Edit Person screen into a more powerful and flexible workspace. Whether you’re attaching citations, refining your notes, or organizing tasks, you’ll find that the process is smoother and requires fewer steps. The end result is more time spent on research and discovery—and less time clicking through screens.

👉 Learn more about RootsMagic 11 at rootsmagic.com/rootsmagic