What it does
An onboarding link opens the ordinary create-a-memorial form with the details you already have filled in. The person checks them, changes anything they want, and carries on.
It needs nothing from you except the ability to write a URL. No API client, no authentication, no keys to rotate. If your system can produce a hyperlink, or an AI assistant can put one in a reply, it can use this.
The address is https://app.cherishedbook.com/start.
An assistant that can use our API should do that instead, because it can then create and look after the memorial directly. This page is for everything that cannot.
Parameters
Only name matters. Everything else is optional.
| Parameter | Values | Notes |
|---|---|---|
name | text, up to 255 | The person or pet who died. |
type | person or pet | Defaults to person. |
mode | self or ai | self puts your wording in the obituary box. ai passes your notes to our own writing help. Defaults to self. |
born | date, YYYY-MM-DD | Ignored if it cannot be read or is in the future. |
died | date, YYYY-MM-DD | As above. |
species | e.g. dog, cat | Pets only. |
notes | text, up to 1000 | Raw material for mode=ai. Facts, not prose. |
title | text, up to 255 | For mode=self. |
subtitle | text, up to 255 | For mode=self. |
story | text, up to 1500 | The obituary, for mode=self. |
feel | a feel key | Suggests the visual tone. |
tradition | a tradition key | Suggests faith or cultural handling. |
ref | a-z, 0-9, hyphens, up to 32 | Who sent them. Please set it, so we can tell integrations apart. |
Keep the whole URL under about 2,000 characters. Anything longer than the limits above is dropped rather than cut in half, because half a sentence presented as someone's own words is worse than an empty box.
Examples
A name and dates, which is enough:
https://app.cherishedbook.com/start?name=Margaret%20Hill&born=1948-03-02&died=2026-07-14&ref=your-systemNotes for our writing help to work from:
https://app.cherishedbook.com/start?name=Margaret%20Hill&died=2026-07-14&mode=ai¬es=Taught%20at%20Stoke%20Park%20for%20thirty%20years.%20Three%20grandchildren.&ref=your-systemWording you have already written:
https://app.cherishedbook.com/start?name=Margaret%20Hill&mode=self&story=She%20taught%20for%20thirty%20years%20and%20never%20forgot%20a%20name.&ref=your-systemA pet:
https://app.cherishedbook.com/start?type=pet&name=Bramble&species=dog&died=2026-05-01&ref=your-systemRules
Three things are worth knowing, because they are what make this safe to hand out.
A link creates nothing. It fills in a form. A memorial exists only once a person has completed it and confirmed their email address. You cannot create memorials through this, and neither can anyone who copies your link.
A bad parameter is never an error. Anything unrecognised, malformed or too long is ignored and the rest still works. Someone following your link is often newly bereaved, and they should never meet a validation message caused by software they have no relationship with. Test your links, but know that a mistake degrades quietly rather than dead-ending them.
The details leave the URL immediately. We read them, then redirect to a clean address before the page renders. They do not stay in browser history or reach our analytics.
Businesses
If the person following the link is signed in to Cherished Book and working in a business context, the memorial is attributed to that business, is premium, and is billed at your wholesale rate when it goes live.
That attribution comes from who they are signed in as, never from the link. There is no parameter for it and adding one does nothing. It means a link is safe to put in an email, a document, or anywhere else it might be forwarded.
If they are signed out, or working in their personal context, they get an ordinary personal memorial.
To create memorials for families without a person in a browser, use the API. That is what it is for.
When to use the API instead
Links are for a person in a browser. Use the API when you need any of this:
- Creating memorials without anyone clicking anything
- Editing a memorial after it exists
- Reading tributes, or approving them
- Uploading a photo
- Knowing whether something worked
A link tells you nothing about what happened afterwards. If you need to know, you need the API.