/minutes-cleanup
Help the user manage disk space and organize old recordings. Minutes is
transcript-first: markdown notes and structured memory are durable, while raw
audio is a temporary recovery/reprocessing layer unless pinned.
Check current usage
minutes storage
minutes storage --json
Present this to the user before taking any action.
Common cleanup tasks
Preview raw-audio cleanup
After transcription, the original audio files are no longer needed for search or
recap. They only matter if you want to re-transcribe with a better model or
debug recovery. Cleanup is preview-only unless --apply is passed.
# Use the configured retention policy
minutes cleanup
# Try a shorter successful-audio window
minutes cleanup --older-than 14d
# Machine-readable preview for agents
minutes cleanup --json
Delete raw audio candidates
Only apply cleanup after showing the preview and getting explicit confirmation.
minutes cleanup --apply
minutes cleanup --older-than 14d --apply
Archive old meetings
Move meetings older than N days to an archive folder:
mkdir -p ~/meetings/archive
# Find meetings older than 90 days
find ~/meetings -maxdepth 1 -name "*.md" -mtime +90
# Move them (confirm with user first)
find ~/meetings -maxdepth 1 -name "*.md" -mtime +90 -exec mv {} ~/meetings/archive/ \;
Archived meetings won't appear in minutes list or minutes search (which only scans ~/meetings/), but they're still on disk if needed.
Clean up processed voice memos
The watcher moves originals to ~/meetings/memos/processed/ after transcription:
du -sh ~/meetings/memos/processed/ 2>/dev/null
Clean up stale state
# Remove stale PID file
rm -f ~/.minutes/recording.pid
# Clean old logs (keep last 7 days)
find ~/.minutes/logs -name "*.log" -mtime +7 -delete 2>/dev/null
# Remove last-result.json (transient)
rm -f ~/.minutes/last-result.json
Gotchas
- Never delete
.md files without asking — These are the transcripts. They're small and contain the actual value. WAV files are the space hogs.
- Prefer
minutes cleanup over raw find -delete — The CLI understands pinned audio and sidecar stems.
- Archived meetings are invisible to search —
minutes search only walks ~/meetings/ and ~/meetings/memos/. If you need archived meetings searchable, configure QMD to index ~/meetings/archive/ too.
- Audio deletion is irreversible — If the user might want to re-transcribe with a better model later, suggest pinning important recordings and only deleting old unpinned candidates.
- Pin exceptions in frontmatter — Add
audio_retention: pinned to a meeting to keep its raw audio out of cleanup candidates.
- Audio is ~10 MB/minute, transcripts are ~1 KB/minute — Deleting audio saves 99%+ of space while keeping all searchable content.
- iCloud sync caveat — If
~/meetings/ is in an iCloud-synced folder, deleted files go to "Recently Deleted" and still count against storage for 30 days.