# They Served

> A tribute writer for Remembrance Day, Veterans Day and Armistice Day (11 November). Type what your family knows about a relative who served, one fact per line, with their name, your relationship, where the tribute goes, its length and its tone. The free side runs in the browser: every fact sorted into on record, family story or not known, the pronoun to use, and a verdict by a fixed rule. One metered reply writes a title, a line for a plaque, the tribute at the length you chose, a note on how each fact was used, the questions to ask and what to check before sharing.

App: https://they-served.skillsafe.ai/
API tutorial: https://they-served.skillsafe.ai/api.html

## Why it exists

Ahead of 11 November 2026, readers of the English Wikipedia article on Veterans Day rose from 2,655 in the week from 20 September to 4,860 in the week to 20 October, and Remembrance Day from 2,931 to 5,115. Many families write a few lines about someone who served - for a post, a school assignment or a service programme - and most of what they know is a mix of papers, stories and gaps. A tribute that states a family story as fact, or fills a gap with a guessed unit or battle, can be wrong in public. They Served keeps the three apart.

## What the free side does

- One fact per line, up to 10. A question, or a line that says nobody knows, is not known. A line where a document says something ("discharge papers say...") is on record. A line that says who told it or hedges ("Grandma said", "apparently", "Dad thinks") is a family story. A line that names papers, a photo, a medal or a letter is on record. Anything else is treated as a family story. End a line with ", record", ", story" or ", unknown" to set it yourself.
- The pronoun: your choice, else read from the relationship (grandfather, aunt ...), else the name only.
- The verdict, checked in order: check before sharing - nothing is on record; mostly family stories - stories outnumber the facts on record; on record - otherwise.
- The piles are a reading of your wording, not a check of any record.

## The paid reply

One JSON object: verdict (check_first | mostly_stories | on_record), title, plaque, tribute, facts (one {fact, use, how} per fact, in order; use is stated, framed or left_out), questions (up to 6) and before_sharing. It writes only from your facts: no invented rank, unit, place, date, medal, person, feeling or memory; family stories are told as stories; not-known facts become questions; no hero, sacrifice or battle words unless your facts use them; no judgement of any war or country. The page re-checks every reply against the rule and those limits.

## Exports

The tribute as plain text, the whole page as Markdown, JSON, and the fact ledger as CSV (one row per fact with its pile and how the tribute used it). Kept tributes go to a list in your SkillSafe account (opt-in), so you can come back when a relative answers a question.

## Source

Built on the SkillSafe skill @rhavekost/narrative-nonfiction (https://skillsafe.ai/skill/@rhavekost/narrative-nonfiction) - memoir and narrative nonfiction: true stories told with honest framing - applied to one short family tribute. The reply runs on gpt-terra and is metered per run.