Help
LifeContext is an interactive timeline. It helps you see which people lived at the same time, which events happened around them, and how both relate to larger historical periods.
Quick Start
Start with Time. Choose a period such as Renaissance, Enlightenment, or World Wars. The diagram will move to that time range.
Then open People or Events. Choose a role or event type. If there are many matching items, use Select to pick the individual people or events you want to see.
Tap or click any person or event in the diagram to open its Details.
The Main Areas
- Time sets the historical range quickly.
- People groups people by role, such as ruler, artist, philosopher, or scientist.
- Events groups events by type, such as artwork, war, treaty, invention, or crisis.
- Select lets you choose individual people or events from the active group.
- Details shows images, dates, short profiles, sources, and AI explanations.
- Advanced contains year range, sorting, search, and the big-picture explanation.
Reading the Diagram
People are shown as horizontal life bars. If a ruler has known reign dates, the reign is marked inside the life bar with vertical lines.
Single-year events are shown as vertical lines. Multi-year events are shown as light areas. Event colors help you see which event type they belong to.
A selected year appears as a black vertical marker. This is useful if you want to ask, for example, "What was happening around the year I was born?"
Navigation
On desktop, drag directly in the diagram to pan left or right. Hold Ctrl and use the mouse wheel or trackpad to zoom.
On iPhone and iPad, drag the diagram to pan. Pinch to zoom in or out. Tap a person or event once to open details.
If the diagram stops at the present day, zoom in before moving further. LifeContext does not pan beyond the current year.
Search and Year Focus
Use Search people or events to jump directly to a known person or event. LifeContext will adjust the diagram and highlight the result.
Use the Year field to center the diagram around a specific year. LifeContext shows roughly 50 years before and after it. Clear the year to remove the marker.
AI Explanations
Tell me more explains the selected person or event.
Show context selects related people and events from the LifeContext data and explains why they are useful context.
Explain context explains the currently selected time range and hand-picked people or events. To keep the result meaningful, narrow the selection if too many items are active.
You can choose the audience, length, and format. The same explanation can also be read aloud with Listen.
Reset
Use the circular arrow in the upper right to clear the current view and start again.
Offline Use
After LifeContext has loaded online once, the app shell and generated data are cached for faster loading and basic offline use. AI explanations and audio require an internet connection.