Coll8or: The Somerton Dossier Research App

Reads this page aloud, including each clip description.

Coll8or is a research management app I designed over many months, drawing on years of writing functional requirements specifications and 17 years of research into the Somerton Man case. I wrote the specifications, and the app was built with Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding tool. It manages and organises research across people, locations, events, dates, connections and more.

Everything Coll8or displays comes from the source documents held in its database, and each item can be traced back to its source. The connections shown in these clips are found by matching across those documents; they are not generated by AI.

[Optional, if AI features are in the beta: Optional AI features are switched off in these demonstrations.]

The version shown here is configured for the Somerton Man case. Users will be able to configure it for their own work, such as a family history project or an investigative journalist’s research. In my own use, it has brought out connections between people that could easily have been missed.

Clip 1: Dashboard

Coll8or_1_Dashboard · screen recording · 0:17

The Dashboard gives an immediate overview of the content being managed and its key figures. From there you can drill down into the detail.

Clip 2: Matrix

Coll8or_2_Matrix · screen recording · 0:18

The Matrix shows the number of connections found between people of interest in the Somerton Man case. You can drill down to the individual documents behind each connection to see how many there are and what kind they are. The clip shows only part of this section.

Clip 3: Knowledge Graph

Coll8or_3_Knowledgegraph · screen recording · 0:17

For this demonstration the knowledge graph has been limited to 15 nodes; the full graph is much larger. Lines join the nodes. Selecting a line changes its colour, and clicking it shows the details of that connection.

Clip 4: Dossier

Coll8or_4_Dossier · screen recording · 0:14

The dossiers in this clip cover people, locations and organisations connected with the case. The Somerton Dossier project uses seven types of dossier: [list]. Users can add more types to suit their own work.

Clip 5: Configure

Coll8or_5_Configure · screen recording · 0:23

Finally, the configuration tools. These let users define the objects their project needs: sections, document types, subjects and more. Each project also declares the standards it works to, chosen from a fixed register rather than typed in: records and document management (ISO 16175, ISO 15489, ISO 19475); data quality (ISO 8000); software quality (ISO/IEC 25010:2023); information security (ISO 27001); editorial style (New Hart’s Rules, Butcher’s Copy-editing); qualitative-data interchange (REFI-QDA / QDPX); and historical method (Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft). Software quality, information security, editorial style and data interchange are marked as aspirational: targets being worked towards, not yet met.

That is a brief overview. I designed Coll8or from a researcher’s point of view, and beta testing begins in November 2026. If you would like to take part, use the contact page.

Have information? If you hold documents, photographs or family knowledge relating to the Somerton Man case, use the contact page at [CONTACT PAGE URL]. Submissions are read by Gordon Cramer, kept confidential unless you agree otherwise, and passed to SA Police where relevant.