Timeline Maker AI FAQs

Timeline Maker AI is an experimental tool by Preceden that lets you generate timelines on any topic using artificial intelligence.

How do I access it?

Timeline Maker AI is available on Preceden's homepage.

How much does it cost?

Timeline Maker AI is free to use and does not require you to sign up for a Preceden account.

Editing a timeline you create with Timeline Maker AI does require a Preceden account, but a free one is enough to get started. You can create one in two ways:

Click the Edit Timeline button above the generated timeline.
Click the Sign Up button at the top of the page and explore Preceden from there.

A free account lets you open the timeline in the editor, change its appearance, delete events, and adjust the dates, notes, colors, and icons of the events Timeline Maker AI added. Generated timelines usually have more events than the free plan's limit of 10. While a timeline is over that limit, adding your own events and renaming the generated ones require a paid plan.

How does it work?

Behind the scenes, Timeline Maker AI uses a large language model, the same kind of technology behind tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, with prompts tailored for creating timelines.

What type of timelines does it work well for?

Timeline Maker AI works best for well-known historical events you could look up on a search engine, such as World War II or the history of space exploration. It also works well for fictional timelines, like a timeline of future human space exploration.

If your timeline covers content that is only known to you or is not available online (a project plan specific to your organization, say, or a personal legal case), Timeline Maker AI cannot generate an accurate timeline. It is still worth a try as a starting point, but expect to edit heavily to fit your own material.

How accurate is it for historical timelines?

For well-known historical events, the timelines generated with Timeline Maker AI are usually very accurate.

However, the less well-known the topic, the more likely it is that the timeline will contain inaccuracies. For that reason, we recommend double-checking the content when the topic is not well known. Learn more in our Hallucinated Events guide.

It is also less reliable for very recent events, so it won't work well for timelines about the last few years.

Lastly, because of a limitation in web browsers, Preceden only supports dates back to 240,000 BC, so this tool cannot generate timelines about topics older than that.

Why won't it generate a timeline for my topic?

When a generation can't go ahead, Preceden explains why in a red bar below the topic box rather than leaving you waiting. What you see depends on what stopped it:

The topic needs to be more detailed for Preceden to generate a timeline about it. There isn't enough to work with. Preceden strips the word "Gantt" out of the topic before generating, so entering "Gantt chart" on its own leaves nothing behind.
Please specify what topic you want the timeline to be about. You entered the word "timeline" by itself. Entering línea de tiempo or one of its variants gets the same message in Spanish.
The topic cannot include a URL. Preceden generates from the topic you describe, not from a page you link to, so write out the subject instead of pasting an address.
This topic might be inappropriate. Try something else. Every topic is screened before it reaches the model, with no exceptions. Historical violence sometimes trips the screen, so rewording a topic is worth a try.
The AI timeline generator is at capacity right now. More timelines are being generated site-wide than Preceden will run in an hour. Nothing is wrong with your topic, and waiting a while and trying again usually works.
Preceden is handling too many timeline generation requests right now. Please try again in a few minutes. Same idea, one layer down: the model itself was busy. A few minutes is usually enough.
We had trouble generating a timeline about this topic. Fewer than three events came back, which is too few to draw. This is the message that most often means the topic is too obscure or too narrow, so add detail and generate again.
We were unable to generate a timeline for this topic. The generation finished but no events came back at all. As the message says, try rewording the topic or choosing a broader one.
Generating this timeline timed out, We couldn't process this request due to a technical issue on our end, or There was a problem processing your request. These mean something went wrong on Preceden's side, not with your topic. Try again, and if the same message keeps coming back, let us know.

If you keep hitting the same message on a topic you think should work, email [email protected] and tell us what you searched for.

Above the AI-generated timeline, you'll see an Export & Share button. Without an account, you can use Copy Link to copy the timeline's address, Open in new tab to view it on a page of its own, and the Tweet and Facebook items to post it.

The PDF and Image items work a little differently: clicking either one asks you to create a Preceden account before the export runs.

What else should I know?

Start dates

By default, a plan starts next Monday. You can request a specific start date instead, on a plan or on any other timeline. For example:

Trip to Venice in August
Plan to get in shape starting in May
Zombie apocalypse next month

Durations

Similarly, you can request a specific duration for project plans:

Two week trip to Venice in August
Six month startup launch plan

Languages

By default, Preceden detects the language of the topic you search for and generates the timeline in that language.

For example:

A search for Inteligencia Artificial would result in a timeline about AI in Spanish
A search for Artificial Intelligence would result in a timeline about AI in English
A search for Artificial Intelligence in Spanish would result in a timeline about AI in Spanish

To choose the language yourself, use the language menu just below the topic box. It is set to Detect Language until you change it. Pick a language from the list and Preceden writes the timeline's title and events in that language, whatever language you typed the topic in. Your browser remembers the choice for your next visit, so set it back to Detect Language when you want automatic detection again.

Your own list of events

You can also paste a list of your own events and dates into the topic box. When the topic includes more than five dates with a four-digit year, Preceden builds the timeline from the events in your list instead of coming up with its own. For example:

1969: Apollo 11 lands on the Moon
1981: First Space Shuttle launch
1990: Hubble Space Telescope launches
1998: First module of the International Space Station launches
2012: Curiosity rover lands on Mars
2021: James Webb Space Telescope launches

Press Shift+Enter to start a new line, since Enter on its own starts generating.

The topic box holds up to 3,000 characters. It stops accepting text at that point, and a longer paste is cut off without a warning, so split a longer list into more than one timeline or trim the descriptions.

Gantt charts

To get a Gantt chart instead, include the word "Gantt" anywhere in the topic:

Product launch plan Gantt chart

How do I contact support?

You can contact us anytime at [email protected].

We welcome questions and feedback, especially any bugs or inaccurate data you might encounter.