Kinstrel
One tree, shared.
Each ancestor exists only once in Kinstrel. When a cousin you have never met completes your great-grandfather’s record, it is your tree that grows.
Free. No trackers. Your data stays yours.
Everyone types in the same ancestors
Your aunt has her software, your cousin his file, you your notebook. Three people copy out the same 1898 birth record, each on their own, never meeting.
The work already exists somewhere. It is simply scattered, in three incomplete copies that will never come together.
Branches meet
There are no walled-off trees in Kinstrel: there is one graph, and you have a place in it. The day your line meets a stranger’s through a common ancestor, the two connect — and each of you sees what the other had found.
Two families who did not know of each other, joined by a forebear born in 1841.
How it works
01
You create your record
An email address is enough. No password to remember: a sign-in link is sent to you.
02
You add your relatives
Parents, grandparents, siblings. Approximate dates are accepted as they are: “about 1890” is information, not a mistake.
03
Your family fills in
You invite whoever you like. Each person takes over their own record and decides what others see.
Living people are protected by default
This is not an option buried in settings: it is the rule that governs the whole display, applied on the server before anything is sent.
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Beyond four family links, a living person has no name
The node exists and connects the tree. It says nothing else.
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Minors are never visible beyond two links
No photograph, no document accessible to a third party. Without exception.
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Your record belongs to you
You set its visibility, up to becoming invisible to everyone.
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No trackers, therefore no cookie banner
The only cookie used is the one that keeps your session.
What we commit to
Three points, and only three, because these are the ones we actually control.
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Exporting will stay free, complete and permanent
GEDCOM and JSON, no watermark, no cap. An automated check genuinely runs it, so the promise does not rest on good intentions.
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Your data will not be sold
Not the records, not the documents, not the addresses. To no one, in any form.
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If the business is sold, you will be told
With enough notice to export and leave if the buyer does not suit you.
We do not promise never to sell the business: that would be unverifiable, and would destroy the very trust this page seeks to build.
Your tree starts with you
Create your record, add your parents. The rest follows, and your family can fill in the gaps.