/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

-t, --content-type <meeting|memo>

--since <date>

2026-03-01

-l, --limit <n>

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. To read the full transcript of a match, use

cat <path>

How search works

Search is case-insensitive and matches against both the transcript body and the YAML frontmatter title. It walks all

.md

~/meetings/

memos/

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 everything someone discussed:

  "Alex"

  or

  "Case"

• Search for decisions:

  "decided"

  ,

  "agreed"

  ,

  "committed to"

• Combine with

  Read

  to load the full context after finding a match

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.