From gedcom-skills
Use when the user asks to read, open, summarize, inspect, view, parse, or describe a GEDCOM file (`.ged` or `.gdz`), or asks "what's in this family tree", "show me this genealogy file", "list everyone in this GEDCOM", "show record @I1@", "what version is this GEDCOM", or wants a JSON dump of GEDCOM contents. Handles GEDCOM 5.5.1, 5.5.5, and FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0+; preserves encoding, BOM, and extension tags.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/gedcom-skills:read-gedcomThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Parse a GEDCOM file and report on its contents. Three modes:
Parse a GEDCOM file and report on its contents. Three modes:
INDI, FAM, SOUR, …) one per line.Add --json to any mode for a structured dump.
tree.ged?" → summarylist INDIrecord @I42@--jsonDo not use when:
This skill is a thin wrapper around the gedcom-read console script published by gedcom-lite.
The recommended invocation uses uvx, which installs the package into a cached ephemeral environment on first use — no global pip install required:
uvx --from gedcom-lite gedcom-read FILE [args]
To run unreleased changes from git instead of the PyPI release:
uvx --from "git+https://github.com/vaelen/gedcom-lite" gedcom-read FILE [args]
If gedcom-lite is already installed system-wide (pip install gedcom-lite or uv tool install gedcom-lite), invoke gedcom-read directly.
gedcom-read FILE # summary (default)
gedcom-read FILE list TAG # enumerate records of a type
gedcom-read FILE record XREF # show one record, pointers resolved
gedcom-read FILE record XREF --depth N # limit nesting depth
gedcom-read FILE --json # dump full document as JSON
gedcom-read - < FILE # read from stdin
TAG is INDI, FAM, SOUR, REPO, OBJE, SUBM, NOTE, SNOTE, etc.
XREF is the cross-reference id including @…@, e.g. @I1@.
$ uvx --from gedcom-lite gedcom-read tree.ged
GEDCOM version: 7.0
Encoding: utf-8-sig (with BOM)
Line ending: LF
Records:
FAM 47
INDI 142
…
$ uvx --from gedcom-lite gedcom-read tree.ged list INDI
@I1@ John /Smith/ (1 JAN 1900 – 5 MAR 1965)
@I2@ Jane /Smith/ (1902 – ?)
$ uvx --from gedcom-lite gedcom-read tree.ged record @I1@
@I1@ INDI
NAME John /Smith/
SEX M
BIRT
DATE 1 JAN 1900
$ uvx --from gedcom-lite gedcom-read tree.ged --json | jq '.records | length'
142
list, indented tree for record.{level, tag, xref?, payload?, children?: [...]}. The full-document form also includes version, encoding, bom, line_terminator, declared_char, and warnings.For GEDCOM semantics see the docs at the repo root:
docs/format.md — line grammar, levels, xrefs, CONT/CONC, encodingdocs/tags.md — common tags by record typedocs/versions.md — 5.5.1 vs 5.5.5 vs 7.0 differencesCreates, edits, and optimizes skills for Claude Code, including drafting, evaluating with test prompts, iterating on performance, and improving skill descriptions for better triggering accuracy.
npx claudepluginhub vaelen/gedcom-skills --plugin gedcom-skills