117 billion humans have lived on Earth
99.99% of them have been forgotten
Biography Library is the universal and open-source archive dedicated to preserving the memory of every human life
Create your biography for free – No Commercial Exploitation – Ethical & Local AI hosted in Switzerland
The Real Urgency
+
61,000,000
people leave this earth every year
As you read this, thousands of stories are vanishing forever. Grandparents passing away without sharing their legacy. Parents leaving without documenting their journey.
There is no time to waste
Why Biography Library exists now
01.
The Democratization of Memory
For centuries, preserving your story was a privilege reserved for the rich and famous. Today, ethical Artificial Intelligence has changed everything. We aren’t using AI to write for you — we are using AI to help you write.
Not sure how to start? AI guides you with gentle prompts. Not a great writer? AI corrects grammar and spelling. Prefer to speak? Simply tell your story out loud — the system listens and transcribes. Already written your story somewhere else? You can import it directly — Biography Library is also a home for words that have already been found.
02.
The Numbers
Approximately 117 billion humans have lived on this planet. Of these, only 12.8 million have a presence on Wikidata (0.01%), around 5 million have a biography on Wikipedia (0.004%), and an estimated 6–8 million have ever been the subject of a published book. The remaining 99.99% — billions of mothers, fathers, pioneers, dreamers — have vanished without a trace. Biography Library exists to change this statistic.
Your life, however ordinary it may seem, contains decisions, adaptations, and wisdom that no dataset has ever captured. Every public biography in our archive is not a forgotten file in a dusty database — it is a verified node of real human experience, available to history.
03.
Why Switzerland
Neutrality (since 1815) · Strong Legal Privacy (nLPD + GDPR) · Political Stability (700+ years) · Security Outside Mass Surveillance. For centuries, Switzerland has protected what others could not — assets, documents, institutions, and the identities of people from every nation and every conflict. It takes no sides. It protects all stories equally, regardless of nationality, politics, or religion.
Biography Library’s AI will run on Swiss servers, using ethical and open-source models. Your data will never leave Switzerland.
04.
The Moment is Now
There is no time to lose. In 100 years, we will be forgotten. Our civilization could be dust. Your great-grandchildren will live in a world you cannot imagine, but if they read your story, they will know what you loved, what you feared, what you built, what you learned, what you got wrong — and the regrets for what you didn’t do and would have wanted to do.
Don’t let these stories fade away. Haven’t you watched the video yet? Watch it now — it only takes a minute.
Manifesto
Biography Library is founded on a Manifesto.
It contains the principles that govern every decision on privacy, AI, governance, data, and permanence.
The Manifesto is public, available in 4 languages, and freely downloadable. It is not a legal document hidden in the footnotes: it is the heart of the project.
The 10 principles
— summary of the Manifesto —
1. Right to Memory
Throughout history, the right to be remembered belonged only to the wealthy and the famous — 0.01% of all who ever lived. The remaining 99.99% — 117 billion lives — vanished in silence, not because they lacked value, but because no one built a place for them. Biography Library is the correction of this millennia-old injustice. The right to memory is not a privilege. It is a fundamental human right.
2. Self-Determination of Memory
Every person has the inalienable right to tell their own story — their voice, their words, their truth. You may also honor the memory of a loved one who is no longer with us, preserving the voice the world can no longer hear. You cannot create biographies of living people other than yourself, nor of minors under 18. For those who have left, you are the voice of their memory.
3. Open Source
Biography Library is open source under the AGPL v3.0 license from its very first day, with all code publicly available on GitHub. Anyone can inspect, verify, and contribute to the codebase at any time. The AGPL license prevents large corporations from appropriating the project without returning changes to the community. We build a digital common good for humanity — not a proprietary system.
4. Ethical & Local AI
AI helps you write — it never replaces your voice, never invents facts, and never decides anything about your story. All processing runs exclusively on Swiss-based servers using open-source models: your data never leaves Swiss jurisdiction and is never used to train commercial AI models. AI assistance is entirely optional. You always have the final word on every word.
5. Identity Verification
Every author is personally responsible for the truthfulness of what they publish. For autobiographies, you declare under civil and criminal responsibility that your identity is genuine and that you are at least 18. For biographies of those who have left, you declare that the person has genuinely passed away. Their biography undergoes a 30-day temporary mode period before definitive publication.
6. Privacy & Security
All servers are in Switzerland, protected by the Swiss nLPD and the GDPR. You decide who reads your story: Public, Semi-private, Family-only, or Private. We protect you from unauthorized access, data breaches, government surveillance, and commercial exploitation. Your data is never sold or monetized. Private and family-only biographies are technically inaccessible to any external system.
7. Community Guidelines
We protect freedom of expression — including uncomfortable truths — but never at the cost of real harm. Level 1 violations (CSAM, genocide glorification, terrorist content) result in immediate permanent removal. Level 2 violations (hate speech, harassment, doxxing) are reviewed by a human moderator with the right of appeal. No content is ever removed without human review.
8. No Commercial Exploitation
Your story is not a product. Biography Library never places advertising on biographies, never sells your data, and never hides core features behind a paywall — the basic archive is free forever. We sustain ourselves through voluntary membership fees, ethical sponsorships, donations, public funding, and optional premium services such as print-on-demand. Sponsor logos appear only on the website — never on individual biographies.
9. Permanence & Resilience
Our mission is an archive that survives for centuries — through technological shifts, institutional crises, and geopolitical change. We maintain active redundancy across multiple formats and geographically distant locations, and we commit to adopting new preservation technologies as they mature. We never bind ourselves to a specific technology: we bind ourselves to the principle of maximum readability over the longest possible time.
10. Transparent Governance
Biography Library is a Swiss non-profit Association (art. 60 ff. CC), governed by principles, not profits. The Board of Directors guides all operational and strategic decisions, with full accountability to the mission and the community. Supporting Members participate in an advisory capacity, and the community is always consulted before any significant change. Annual financial and impact reports are published openly and without exception.
The Emblem of memory
The Biography Library emblem is composed of three symbolic elements that tell the promise of the preservation of human memory.
The Blue Dot — Top left:
A perfect and solitary circle that represents the individual — one life among billions on our blue planet. It echoes Carl Sagan’s cosmic perspective and affirms that every human story matters, regardless of scale or prominence. This circle is you.
The Voice Waves — Top right:
Three concentric arcs radiating outwards symbolize the voice heard, the story told. These waves represent both the literal sound of your words — voice recordings, testimony — and the metaphorical propagation of memory through time and generations.
The Interwoven Threads — Bottom:
Two fluid lines that wrap around and embrace each other symbolize the unbreakable bond between generations — the past and the future holding each other. DNA, roots, heritage, and the continuous thread of human connection.
The logo exists exclusively in black and white. No cultural or chromatic bias. Timeless, fashions fade, black and white endures.
Roadmap 2026
Public milestones towards launch.
Foundation – Jan. 2026 • DONE!
Registered Swiss Association. Statutes approved. Manifesto published in 4 languages. AGPL v3.0 license active. Code MVP on GitHub (still private).
Phase 2 – Q1-Q2 2026
Strategic Partner Research — Technical partners (development), institutional (archives, libraries), research (universities, ethical AI), volunteers.
Phase 3 – Q2-Q3 2026
Platform v.1 Development already working with Apertus, Swiss Open source Foundation Model. Sponsor Research — Foundations, ethical companies, private.
Phase 4 – Q2-Q3 2026
Open Beta, feedback collection. Start of the collection of the first biorgraphies.
Phase 5 – Q4 2026
Public Launch
Echo
Articles on Memory, Rights, and Ethical AI
Frequently
asked questions
Can’t find the answer that you’re looking for? Get in touch with us.
The public beta is planned for Q4 2026. A functioning MVP is already in an advanced stage of development. Join the waiting list to be among the first to access.
The preservation of your story — autobiography or biographies of family members who have left — is and will always be free. Additional optional services (book printing, extended hosting) may have a cost in the future.
Biography Library will be accessible through any web browser on PC, Mac, laptop, smartphone, or tablet — simply open it and start writing, with nothing to download or install. On mobile devices, you will also be able to add it to your home screen with one tap: this is made possible by PWA technology (Progressive Web App), which makes a website look and behave just like a native app — no app store needed. For the best writing experience, we recommend using a screen of 13 inches or larger, as it gives you more room to read, edit, and navigate your story comfortably. That said, no matter what device you use, you can always dictate your story by voice instead of typing — just speak, and Biography Library will listen, transcribe, and organize your words for you. If you’ve never written on a screen before, don’t worry — your voice is all you need.
Yes, and you can do it in more than one way.
If you have already written your story somewhere else — in a Word document, a plain text file, or any word processor — you can bring it into Biography Library in two ways:
Upload a file in .txt, .rtf, or .docx format, up to a maximum of 5 MB.
Paste your text directly into the editing window, no file upload needed.
You can also work in a more flexible, back-and-forth way. Start writing inside Biography Library, export what you have, continue refining it in an external editor — adding notes, expanding sections, asking someone to review it — and then re-import the updated version back into the platform. The story moves with you, wherever you work best.
Biography Library was built for people who don’t know where to start or feel unsure about writing — the AI assistant, the guided questions, the chapter-by-chapter structure are all there for that reason. But if you have already done the work, or prefer to write outside and archive here, the platform is ready to welcome your story exactly as it is.
You can use Biography Library as a creative workspace, a final archive, or anything in between.
You can write the biographies of family members who have left, declaring under your responsibility that the person is actually deceased. You cannot write biographies of living people other than yourself, nor of minors. Multiple people can write different perspectives on the same deceased person.
No — and this is a deliberate choice, not a technical limitation.
An autobiography published on Biography Library is an authentic document: your words, written at a specific moment in your life. Editing it afterwards would mean altering a historical record. This is why every published chapter is immutable: what you wrote stays exactly as it is, forever.
But your story doesn’t end with the first publication.
Biography Library introduces the concept of the Biographical Year: your autobiography is a living document that grows with you over time through successive chapters. After at least 365 days from your last published chapter, the platform unlocks the ability to add a new one — a new year of life, a new period, a new perspective on what has happened.
You are not required to do this every year. You can write your first chapter today and add the next one ten years from now, if you prefer. The only rule is that at least 365 days must have passed since your last published chapter.
The result, over time, is a layered autobiography: each chapter carries its own date, its own perspective, the voice you had at that particular moment in your life. Those who read your story in the future won’t just see who you were — they’ll see who you became, chapter by chapter.
After your death, your autobiography is frozen at the last chapter you published. No one can add anything to your original voice. Your family members can honour your memory by writing a separate biography — an independent document, from their own perspective — which will be linked to your autobiography on your personal page.
At launch, Biography Library adopts a self-attestation model: you confirm your identity with a declaration under your own responsibility. No upload of identity documents is required. With the evolution of government-verified digital identities, we will integrate automatic verification through digital wallets.
Your data resides on Swiss servers, protected by the Swiss federal law on data protection (nLPD) and by GDPR. You decide who can read your biography — public, family, or only you. Your data is never sold nor used for advertising.
Yes. You can export your biography in standard open formats at any time. Your data is yours.
AI guides you with questions, corrects grammar and spelling, and can transcribe voice recordings. It does not write in your place. It cannot add facts that you have not provided. You can use it as much as you want — or not use it at all.
Yes, from day 1. Biography Library is released under the AGPL v3.0 license. The code is public on GitHub. Anyone can verify it and contribute.
Contact us through the Contacts section. Partners and sponsors never have access to user data, nor editorial influence, nor exclusivity, but they are visible on Biography Library pages (not inside individual biographies) and can use the Biography Library name and brand to promote their initiatives.
At launch, the platform will be available in 4 languages: English, French, German, Italian. The Manifesto is already available in all four. The platform will be expanded in the future to cover all major languages worldwide.
Who We Are
Claudio Brignole
Founder & PRESIDENT
Claudio is a pioneer in communication. He founded Aelle Hip Hop Magazine in 1991 — the first Italian magazine entirely dedicated to the genre. For over 30 years he has documented the stories of artists, entrepreneurs, professionals, and “ordinary people” with interviews, articles, and videos. Biography Library is the natural continuation of an activity that has never stopped telling people’s stories by combining all multifaceted skills.
Our Steering Committee
WORK IN PROGRESS
Biography Library is governed by a Steering Committee that is geographically and culturally diverse, reflecting Switzerland’s pluralistic formula.
Claudio Brignole – President. Strategic guidance, mission vision, global cultural connections.
Sebastiano Cobianco – Committee Member. Administration, governance.
Open Positions: 3/5: Romandy · German-speaking Switzerland · International.
We are looking for members with expertise in technology, ethics, nonprofit, privacy, AI with particular attention to representatives of Swiss linguistic regions.
How You Can Join
•
Are you a User?
The platform is not yet open to the public. Join the waiting list to be among the first to access when we launch.
Are you a Partner?
Technical: developers, AI architects, privacy experts. Institutional: archives, libraries, universities. Research: AI ethics centers, digital anthropology. Let’s talk about collaboration.
Are you a Sponsor?
Foundations, mission-driven companies, private supporters. Your sponsorship funds the mission without ethical compromises — no data access, no editorial influence, no exclusivity.
Are you a Volunteer?
Translators, moderators, community support, evangelists. We are looking for passionate people who believe in the preservation of memory. No technical skills necessary.
Are you a Developer?
Biography Library is open source (AGPL v3.0). The code is already on GitHub. Contribute, report bugs, propose features. The code is yours as much as ours.
Contacts
By submitting this form, I consent to the processing of my personal data by Biography Library for the sole purpose of responding to my request, in accordance with the Swiss Federal Data Protection Act (nLPD). My data will not be disclosed to third parties without my consent and may be deleted at my request. For further information, please see our Privacy Policy.
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