minutes-search

name

minutes-search

description

Search past meeting transcripts and voice memos for specific topics, people, decisions, or ideas. Use this whenever the user asks "what did we discuss about X", "find that meeting where we talked about Y", "what did Alex say", "did we decide on", "what was that idea about", or any question that could be answered by searching their meeting history. Also use for "do I have any notes about" or "check my meetings for".

/minutes-search

Find information across all meeting transcripts and voice memos.

Usage

# Basic search
minutes search "pricing strategy"

# Filter to just voice memos
minutes search "onboarding idea" -t memo

# Filter to just meetings
minutes search "sprint planning" -t meeting

# Date filter + limit
minutes search "API redesign" --since 2026-03-01 --limit 5

Flags

Flag	Description
-t, --content-type <meeting|memo>	Filter by type
--since <date>	Only results after this date (ISO format, e.g., 2026-03-01)
-l, --limit <n>	Maximum results (default: 10)

Output

Returns JSON to stdout with an array of matches. Each result includes:

• title — Meeting or memo title
• date — When it was recorded
• content_type — "meeting" or "memo"
• snippet — The line containing the match
• path — Full path to the markdown file

Human-readable output goes to stderr. A result path is only a hint. To read the full transcript, run minutes get "<exact path>" --json, require exit status 0, and use only that response. Never pass the path to cat or the host Read tool.

How search works

Search is case-insensitive and matches against both the transcript body and the YAML frontmatter title. It walks all .md files in ~/meetings/ (including the memos/ subfolder).

For richer semantic search, users can configure QMD as the search engine in ~/.config/minutes/config.toml:

[search]
engine = "qmd"
qmd_collection = "meetings"

Search coaching

When the user's search query is vague or too broad, push back before running it:

• "who said X" or "what did Alex say" → If the meeting has speaker_map in frontmatter, use it to identify who said what. speaker_map maps SPEAKER_X labels to real names. High confidence = reliable, Medium = "likely" (suggest minutes confirm to lock it in).
• "everything" or "all meetings" → "That'll return hundreds of results. What specifically are you looking for? A person, a topic, or a decision?"
• Single common word like "meeting" or "project" → "That's too broad. Can you narrow it — a person's name, a specific topic, or a date range?"
• "that meeting" or "the one where" → "Help me narrow it down. Do you remember who was in the meeting, roughly when it was, or a specific thing that was said?"

Suggest search strategies based on what the user is looking for:

• Finding a person's input → Search their name: minutes search "Alex"
• Finding a decision → Search decision keywords: minutes search "decided" or minutes search "agreed"
• Finding an idea → Search voice memos: minutes search "idea" -t memo
• Finding something from a time range → Use --since: minutes search "pricing" --since 2026-03-01

Tips for good searches

• Search for what people said, not document titles: "we should postpone the launch" not "launch delay meeting"
• Search for names to find the policy-authorized normal history involving someone: "Alex" or "Case"
• Search for decisions: "decided", "agreed", "committed to"
• Reauthorize a selected result with minutes get "<exact path>" --json before loading full context

Gotchas

• Search is substring, not fuzzy — "price" matches "pricing" and "price", but "prcing" (typo) matches nothing. Try multiple terms if you're not sure of the exact wording.
• --since requires ISO date format — Use 2026-03-01, not "last week" or "March 1st". For relative dates, compute the ISO date first: date -v-7d +%Y-%m-%d.
• Large result sets flood stdout — Always use --limit when searching broad terms. The default limit is 10, but common words can match hundreds of files.
• QMD semantic search requires separate setup — If config.toml sets engine = "qmd" but the QMD collection isn't indexed, search will fail silently. Run qmd update && qmd embed first.
• Voice memos vs meetings — Both are searched by default. Use -t memo or -t meeting to narrow results. Voice memos live in ~/meetings/memos/, meetings in ~/meetings/.
• Empty results don't mean it wasn't discussed — If the meeting wasn't transcribed (e.g., recording was stopped before processing), it won't appear in search. Check minutes list to see what's been processed.