Prep Briefs, explained

A Prep Brief is a card at the top of your Meetings list before a call with people you have recorded before. It shows what happened last time and what is still open.

When it appears

When an event has attendees and is under way or starts within the next 45 minutes, the Meetings list shows a Prep Brief for it. The event comes from macOS Calendar, which needs Recordist’s calendar access, or from a calendar feed: an ICS address you add under Settings → Detection, which works on Windows and Linux too. On Windows and Linux the feed is the only source. The card refreshes every minute and is hidden while you search.

Where it comes from

Your own past meetings. Recordist matches the event’s attendees with the people in your finished meetings, including speakers you renamed, and uses the most recent few.

The card shows:

• Prep brief, with the start time, the event title, who it is with and a Join link when the event has one.
• Last time, with the date and title of the latest matching meeting, the first lines of the latest summary and the latest decisions note.
• Still open, with up to six open action items from those meetings. Tick one to mark it done.
• Open last meeting, which opens that meeting so you can check the transcript.

When you have no past meeting with these people, the card says it is the first time.

No model is called and no network is used; the card is assembled from notes and action items already on your machine, so it works offline. Because it is built from generated notes, it can repeat their mistakes, so check the last meeting before you rely on a line.

Prep Briefs are part of Pro and of the 7 days of Pro every install starts with.

Making it better

• On a Mac, grant calendar access so Recordist knows the event and its attendees (why titles matter). On every platform, add your calendar feed under Settings → Detection, and your own name under Your name on invites, so the brief names the other side.
• Tick off action items when they are done; the brief lists only open ones.
• Rename the other side’s speaker in past meetings to the person’s name, so a meeting without calendar attendees can still match.

Turning it off

There is no separate switch for the card. It appears only while Recordist can read a calendar. On a Mac, removing Recordist under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Calendars stops the Mac calendar’s briefs, and clearing the feed address under Settings → Detection stops the feed’s. Either also stops meetings being named from that calendar.