Find what was actually said

Meeting notes are what people remembered, plus a summary a model wrote afterwards. The job is to locate the right meeting, read what it records, and separate what was decided from what was merely discussed.

1. Narrow to the meetings that can contain the answer

Start from list_meetings scoped by time range and involvement, not from a broad query. "The customer call last week" is a date range and an attendee, not a keyword. If the user names a folder or team space, list_meeting_folders first and list inside it. When results look empty, get_account_info tells you which email and workspace you are reading from — a personal account connected where the work one was meant is the usual cause, so say which one you searched.

2. Notes first, transcript only when the wording matters

get_meetings returns the summarized notes and any private notes, which is enough for "what was decided". Reach for get_meeting_transcript only when the exact phrasing matters — a commitment, a number, a quote the user wants verbatim — and quote the line rather than paraphrasing it. Transcripts are long; read them for the passage you need, not front to back.

3. Ask the question tool questions, not lookups

query_granola_meetings answers a natural-language question across many meetings and cites its sources. Use it when the question spans meetings ("what have customers said about pricing this quarter"). Do not use it to fetch a meeting you already identified — read that one directly, because a synthesized answer blurs which meeting said what.

4. Separate decided from discussed

Notes mix proposals, objections, and outcomes. Report a decision only when the notes record one — an action item, an "agreed", an owner and a date. If the notes show discussion without a conclusion, say the question was raised and not resolved; that is a real answer.

5. Cite the meeting

Every claim names the meeting title and date it came from, with a link when the tool returns one. Two meetings that disagree are a finding to report, not a conflict to resolve silently — the later one is not automatically right.

Anti-patterns

• Searching by keyword when the user gave you a date or a person. Meeting titles rarely contain the topic; attendees and dates find the meeting.
• Quoting the summary as if someone said it. Summaries are generated; only the transcript holds words people actually spoke.
• Reading one instance of a recurring meeting. A weekly sync decides things across weeks; check the neighbours before saying something was never raised.
• Reporting "no meetings found" without the scope. Name the workspace, folder, and time range you searched, so an empty result can be checked.