Like a family tree — but it also shows relationships, emotional bonds, and patterns across generations.
It's a map of people. Not a family tree — a family tree is about lineage. A genogram is about relationships. Who's close, who's in conflict, who's been cut off, who was lost. You draw one and you can see someone's whole context in a few minutes. That's the thing about them.
I learned about genograms from Dr. Beverley Keith, Clinical psychologist, and founder the Rosendale Family Therapy Center. A primary focus of her work was family systems and genograms are a core clinical tool in quickly capturing familial relationships. As a scientist and engineer, I abstracted it for use in my daily life to be understand the people around me. I built this tool to make genograms more accessible to everyone. I hope it helps you understand your own family, the characters in a book, or the dynamics of your friend group.
Genogram is built on the same core technology as our other mapping tools — a custom graph store, a hand-built SVG editor, and a lightweight API, with an optional zero-knowledge, client-side encryption mode for confidential content. It was designed from the ground up to handle the unique requirements of genograms — complex relationships, emotional connections, and clinical use cases.
Genogram gives you three levels of protection, and we want to be straight about each. Diagrams created without an account (the no-sign-up option) are stored as-is, unencrypted. A signed-in account's diagrams are private by default: stored on our servers and access-controlled to your account. By default we can access their contents to run the product for you — search, export, previews; that's ordinary private storage, and we want to be straight that it's not zero-knowledge.
Mark a diagram Confidential and it switches to true zero-knowledge encryption: your browser encrypts it with AES-256-GCM before it ever reaches us, under a key derived from your password with Argon2id, so we store only ciphertext and cannot derive your key or read the content. Your password itself never leaves your browser — we sign you in with a separate one-way value. A breach of our stored data would expose Confidential content only as ciphertext. A Space (folder) is shown as Confidential when every diagram in it is; the Space itself has no separate setting. Because your browser downloads our code to perform this encryption, it protects you strongly against theft of our stored data, but is not an absolute guarantee against a compromised server; keep your device and browser trustworthy.
One thing is true no matter which level you use: we always see some metadata — your email, when diagrams change, folder and Space names (unless that Space is Confidential), and how many diagrams you have. And for Confidential content specifically: if you lose both your password and your recovery code, it cannot be recovered by anyone, including us — there is no backdoor. That's what makes Confidential mode suitable for the most sensitive family and clinical data.
Not an EHR. Genogram is not integrated with electronic health records. It does not replace clinical documentation — it is a mapping and visualization tool. Export your diagrams as PNG and attach them to your records as needed.
Not a genealogy database. Genogram stores the diagrams you draw — it is not connected to ancestry databases, DNA registries, or vital records.
For signed-in accounts we store your diagram content, titles, and photos; by default we can read that content to run the product for you, and for anything you mark Confidential we store it as ciphertext we can't read. Anonymous diagrams are stored unencrypted. Metadata — your account email, timestamps, folder and Space names (unless Confidential), diagram counts — is always visible to us regardless of level. We do not sell your data and do not serve ads. See Privacy for the full breakdown.
Part of the PlanChart suite of mapping and investigation tools.
Questions, feedback, or takedown requests: hello@planchart.ai