vscode-gedcom

A comprehensive genealogical IDE for Visual Studio Code.
Interactive family trees, 5-generation circular fan charts, consanguinity & affinity relationship calculation, chronological life timelines, multimedia image previews, real-time plausibility diagnostics, and multi-format support for traditional GEDCOM and modern GEDCOM X (JSON & XML).

GEDCOM files are historically dense with cryptic pointers, undocumented tags, and complex inter-record dependencies. vscode-gedcom turns raw genealogical data into an intuitive, visual workspace — complete with deep language intelligence, interactive graph visualizations, multimedia image previews, and strict verification against the FamilySearch GEDCOM and GEDCOM X specifications.

GitHub Linguist Grammar: This extension's grammar powers syntax highlighting for all .ged files across github.com.

🌟 Visual Features & Tools

🌳 Interactive Family Tree & Kinship Path Highlighting

Draws dynamic generational trees directly in a dedicated side panel. Couples are linked by marriage unions, generations are automatically organized into columns, and children descend naturally from family bars.

• Kinship Path Highlighting: Finding a relationship traces and highlights the exact multi-generational line of descent with glowing golden branches, dimming unrelated relatives.
• Directional Traversal: Switch effortlessly between Both Directions, Ancestors Only, and Descendants Only.
• Vector SVG Export: Export any rendered branch into a standalone SVG with baked theme styles, solid background, and context-aware file naming (tree-<xref>-<name>.svg).
• Interactive Controls: Smooth pan, zoom-to-fit, recentering, and one-click code navigation back to any individual or family record.

🪭 5-Generation Circular Ancestor Fan Chart

Switch the tree view into a $240^\circ$ Radial Fan Chart to explore direct paternal and maternal lineages at a glance.

• Ahnentafel Numbering: Standardized genealogical indexing from the root person ($1$) through parents ($2, 3$), grandparents ($4\text{--}7$), and beyond.
• Color-Coded Lineages: Distinct visual styling for paternal and maternal branches with generation rings and empty-slot indicators.
• Standalone Export: Export the entire circular fan chart directly to clean vector SVG (fan-chart-<xref>-<name>.svg).

🧭 Relationship & Consanguinity Calculator

Select any two individuals in the file to instantly determine their exact genealogical connection.

• Consanguinity (Blood) & Affinity (Marriage): Accurately computes cousin degrees and removals (e.g. 2nd cousin once removed), great-aunts/uncles, grand-nephews/nieces (niblings), in-laws, and step-relations.
• Common Ancestor Resolution: Identifies the nearest common ancestral couple or person connecting both individuals.
• Show Path in Tree: One click dynamically expands the family tree beyond default depth limits and frames the full path between the two relatives.

⏳ Chronological Life Event Timeline & Media Previews

Inspect a person's life journey in the Details Panel with an interactive vertical milestone timeline and multimedia previews.

• Computed Event Ages: Displays exact computed age at every milestone (e.g., Age 0 at birth, Age 24 at marriage or birth of first child, Age 81 at death).
• Comprehensive Life Events: Consolidates personal milestones (birth, baptism, residence, census, marriage, occupations, death, burial) and the births of children.
• Multimedia Image Previews: Renders high-quality thumbnail previews for attached photographs and records — supporting remote https:// URLs as well as local relative and absolute paths (portrait.jpg, portrait.png, C:\..., file:// URIs).
• Click to Navigate: Clicking any milestone jumps directly to the corresponding line in the editor.

⚡ Language Intelligence & Verification

🔍 Real-Time Diagnostics & Plausibility Validation

Driven by the official FamilySearch GEDCOM specification and registries:

• Genealogical Plausibility Checks: Identifies biological contradictions, including death before birth, implausible parent ages at child birth ($< 12$ or $> 70$), post-mortem births, marriage outside lifespan, and unrecorded deaths for individuals born $> 120$ years ago.
• Syntax & Structural Validation: Flags missing tags, invalid cardinality, unrecognized custom tags, and dangling or duplicate @XREF@ pointers.
• Multi-Format Awareness: Automatically adapts validation and intelligence rules for GEDCOM 7.0, GEDCOM X (JSON & XML), GEDCOM 5.5.5, and GEDCOM 5.5.1.

💡 Automated Quick Fixes & Exporter Repairs

One-click Code Actions (Ctrl+. / 💡) to resolve errors, synthesize missing records, and repair corrupted files:

• Plausibility Quick Fixes: Swap inverted birth and death dates or automatically insert missing DEAT entries.
• Dangling Pointer Resolutions: Replace missing pointers with standard @VOID@ or synthesize a new skeleton INDI record.
• Exporter Defect Batch Repair: Detects consecutive lines missing level numbers from exporter defects (such as MyHeritage notes) and repairs the entire block in a single click.
• One-Click GEDCOM 7 Upgrade: GEDCOM: Upgrade File to GEDCOM 7.0 updates headers, converts CONC to CONT, rewrites RELA to ROLE, collects custom _TAG extensions into a standard HEAD.SCHMA block, and ensures standard 0 TRLR.

🏷️ Inlay Hints & Rich Hovers

• Pointer Inline Names: See who or what a pointer references directly at the end of the line (1 FAMS @F1@ $\rightarrow$ John Smith + Jane Doe, <person1 resource="#KWQS-BB1"/> $\rightarrow$ Henry Taylor).
• Enumeration Decoders: Translates opaque codes into plain English (1 SEX M $\rightarrow$ Male, 2 QUAY 3 $\rightarrow$ Primary).
• Lifespan & Event Ages: Shows subject age at event lines computed against their birth date (died age 73).
• Smart Hovers: Rich entity cards for individuals (lifespan, vital birth/death events), source citations, and contributors/agents across GEDCOM and GEDCOM X files.

⌨️ Navigation, Formatting & Symbols

• Cross-Record Navigation (Ctrl+Click / F12): Go to Definition and Find All References (Shift+Alt+F12) across cross-record pointers and resource links in .ged, .json, and .xml files.
• Workspace Symbol Search (Ctrl+T / Cmd+T): Instantly search individuals by name or identifier, families by partner names, sources by title, and repositories.
• Record Skeletons & Snippets: Insert compliant boilerplate templates for indi, fam, sour, repo, birt, marr, deat, buri, cens, and note.
• Document Formatting (Shift+Alt+F): Normalizes level indentation, standardizes uppercase tag names, removes blank lines, and trims trailing whitespace.
• Virtual Indentation: Visually indents lines according to their level number without altering the underlying file content.

🛠️ Commands

⚙️ Configuration Settings

📦 Installation

Search for GEDCOM Language in the VS Code Extensions view, or run:

ext install florianguitton.vscode-gedcom

Works seamlessly on desktop VS Code and in the browser on vscode.dev and github.dev.

📜 Supported Standards

• FamilySearch GEDCOM 7 (7.0.18, February 2025) — The active living standard with machine-readable registries.
• GEDCOM X (JSON & XML) — Modern FamilySearch data exchange specifications for JSON and XML datasets.
• GEDCOM 5.5.5 (2019) — UTF-8 strict maintenance specification.
• GEDCOM 5.5.1 (1999) — The historic universal exchange standard.

🤝 Contributing & Feedback

Contributions, bug reports, and suggestions are warmly welcomed on GitHub. Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md for development workflows.

Distributed under the Apache-2.0 License.