Treez: 5 Failed Attempts to Build a Simple Family Tree App3

What started as a clean idea — "Your family, in one place" — turned into five separate experiments across multiple platforms, tools, and AI agents. All five resulted in broken products.

Here’s what I learned trying to build Treez, the simplest, most expressive family tree builder imaginable — and why simplicity is harder than it looks.

🎯 The Goal

Create a family tree tool where:

• Anyone can write markdown or chat and get a visual diagram instantly
• No drag-and-drop
• No duplication of people
• True generation-based structure
• Expandable with profile + timeline per person
• Shareable, exportable, editable

🔍 Research Phase

Competitor Analysis

• Most tools (Ancestry, MyHeritage, etc.) are bloated, outdated, or locked behind paywalls
• No tool combines text input simplicity with visual clarity

Requirements

• Markdown-to-diagram and chat-to-diagram input
• Dynamic, generational tree rendering
• One-instance-per-person logic
• Editable node sidebar
• Export and invite flows
• Mobile-first minimalism

User Journey

• Access a dashboard
• Create a new family tree
• Type markdown or send a chat
• See real-time, generation-accurate visual diagram
• Click any person to edit
• Export or invite family

🧪 Method 1: Lovable (Fullstack, System-Prompt Driven)

• System prompts based on user journey
• Built backend + frontend + domain in one go
• Used 56 prompts to cycle through ReactFlow, HTML, Canvas, etc.

• Switched between stable/unstable states, agent mode, screenshot mode, and more
• Result: Broken product

• Why: Frontend disconnected from markdown logic, generational layout non-existent

🧪 Method 2: Lovable (Frontend-Only with Mockup Guidance)

• Single frontend flow, mockup-guided
• 26 prompts to fix rendering logic
• No backend, no domain
• Result: Broken product
• Why: Generational layout still failed, duplicate nodes everywhere

🧪 Method 3: Figma + Make (Frontend Only)

• Clean design pass
• Logic-free flow using Make
• Result: Broken product
• Why: Static visuals with zero relationship logic — dead canvas

🧪 Method 4: Bolt (Frontend + Auth Attempt)

• Auto-generated landing page
• Plugged in broken mock authentication
• Result: Broken product
• Why: Auth mocked, no working state flow, dead buttons

🧪 Method 5: Lovable Redux (Markdown & Chat Logic Attempt)

• Frontend-only
• New logic: markdown-to-diagram and chat-to-diagram
• 1 go user flow to tree creation
• Loop of errors in canvas rendering
• Multiple prompts for deduplication, generation fixing, diamond-logic repair
• Result: Broken product
• Why: No persistent tree memory; couldn’t reconcile chat updates into a true tree

🧠 The Pattern

• All tools are optimized for fast UI, not structured logic
• No tool respected:
• generational hierarchy
• instance merging
• tree re-layout based on input

Each flow succeeded in visual generation, failed in structural truth.

💬 Takeaway

The illusion of speed hides the depth of logic required.

If you want to build a tree, you need roots, memory, and branching.

AI-generated frontends right now don’t offer any of those.