FAQ

Frequently asked questions.

If your question isn't answered here, please open an issue on the GitHub repo.

Will my file be stored anywhere?: No. The file is parsed in memory in a single request handler and discarded as the response is sent. See Privacy for the architectural details.
Can my results be reconstructed from the URL?: The URL contains only the IDs of matches that fired plus the relevant genotype keys. There are no rsids, no positions, and no raw variant data. You can't reverse the URL back into your genome.
If you don't store anything, how can I come back to my results later?: The URL is the result. Bookmark it. Email it to yourself. The page will render identically next year. We deliberately keep every previous encoding scheme around forever, so older URLs never break.
Which DNA services do you support?: 23andMe (v3, v4, v5), AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, Living DNA, and generic single-sample VCF files (Nebula, Dante Labs, and similar). More formats are planned.
Should I act on a match?: Not on Crick's say-so. We're an educational tool. If a match concerns you, please talk to a healthcare professional or a certified genetic counsellor. Genetic testing has false positives; clinical-grade confirmation matters before any medical decision.
Why is the library only a few hundred variants?: Because we've focused on variants that are reliably present on consumer DNA chips and have been replicated in the literature. Adding thousands of underpowered single-study findings would be easy and misleading. We'd rather be smaller and honest.
Can I add a match?: Yes — please. Every match is a single YAML file in the GitHub repo. Open a pull request. See the contributing guidelines in the repository.
Is the PDF export really client-side?: Yes. The PDF is rendered in your browser using @react-pdf/renderer. Genome-derived content never returns to the server during export.
What if a match is wrong?: Tell us — open an issue on GitHub with a peer-reviewed reference. The match library is meant to be community-reviewed; mistakes will happen, and the process for fixing them should be visible.
Why “Crick”?: After Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. The name is a nod, not an affiliation — Crick the institution doesn't know we exist.