Archive mode

No inventing means no invisible guesswork.

A family history can be vivid without pretending certainty. MyLore's documentary mode should make sources, inference, conflict, and unknowns visible.

This is the proposed product contract we will use to judge any future archive feature. It is public now because trust should arrive before software.

1. Every factual claim keeps its source

A statement may come from a named speaker, recording, transcript, letter, photograph, public record, existing family book, or research source. Readers should be able to see why it appears.

2. Memory, inference, and research are different

“Aunt Lena remembers…” is not the same as “a 1940 census records…” or “the move likely happened between these two dates.” The interface and the writing should preserve that difference.

3. Conflicting memories remain conflicts

Two people may remember the same event differently. The archive stores both accounts and their context. It does not quietly choose the version that creates the smoothest narrative.

4. Unknowns stay unknown

An approximate year remains approximate. An unnamed person remains unnamed. The prose never fills a gap simply because a complete story sounds better.

5. Research suggests; evidence connects

Public data and research may reveal a possible person, place, event, or relationship. MyLore can surface the possibility and supporting evidence, but it should not merge the connection without confirmation or a defensible threshold.

6. Corrections remain visible

Families need to correct names, relationships, context, and permissions. A future archive should record what changed and why instead of rewriting its own past invisibly.

7. Fiction never becomes evidence

Story mode can create magical worlds with recurring family characters. Its canon is deliberately separate. No fictional trait, event, place, or relationship may become a documentary source.

A future test: if a reader asks “How do we know that?”, MyLore should be able to answer—or say honestly that the family does not know yet.

What this promise does not solve by itself

Accuracy is only one part of responsible family history. Living-person consent, private material, access between relatives, deletion, sensitive revelations, cultural stewardship, and long-term export require their own product and policy design before uploads begin.

Would this contract make you trust an archive?

Tell us which safeguards matter most before MyLore earns the right to hold family material.

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