minutes-brief

# /minutes-brief

Fast, non-interactive briefing that synthesizes your relationship history with someone into a one-page brief — designed so you can read it in 60 seconds before walking into a call.

This is the **proactive layer**. It's built to be invoked silently by a hook (e.g., 15 min before a calendar event) and to also work as a manual `/minutes-brief` command. Unlike `/minutes-prep`, brief asks no questions and sets no goals — it just hands you the facts.

## How it works

### Phase 0: Determine the target

Three ways the user can invoke this:

**1. With a name** (`/minutes-brief sarah`, "brief me on Alex")
→ Use that name directly. Before searching, check for learned aliases:

```bash
node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/hooks/lib/minutes-learn-cli.mjs" aliases "<name>" 2>/dev/null
```

If aliases exist, search across all returned variants and treat them as the same person for the rest of the flow. If the user explicitly says two names are the same person, persist it:

```bash
node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/hooks/lib/minutes-learn-cli.mjs" set-alias "Sarah Chen" "Sarah" "User confirmed these refer to the same person"
```

Then skip to Phase 1.

**2. With "auto" or no argument** (`/minutes-brief`, "brief me on my next call")
→ Auto-detect the next upcoming calendar event. Try sources in order — use the first that works:

- **Google Calendar MCP** (best — Claude users):
  ```
  gcal_list_events(timeMin: "<now ISO>", timeMax: "<+2hr ISO>", condenseEventDetails: false)
  ```
  Filter to events with 2+ attendees, skip all-day events, pick the soonest. Pull attendee names from the event.

- **`gog` CLI** (if installed):
  ```bash
  gog calendar list --today --json 2>/dev/null
  ```

- **Apple Calendar via osascript** (every Mac, zero install):
  ```bash
  osascript -e 'tell application "Calendar" to get {summary, start date} of (every event of every calendar whose start date >= (current date) and start date < ((current date) + 2 * hours))'
  ```

If none return anything, ask once: "I can't find an upcoming meeting. Who do you want a brief on?" Then take whatever they say and move on.

**3. Hook-fireable mode** (`/minutes-brief --auto`, or invoked silently from a hook)
→ Same as auto, but **never ask questions**. If no upcoming meeting and no name, exit silently with no output. Hooks should never spam the user.

### Phase 1: Gather data in parallel

The Minutes CLI already does the hard work. Person profiles, search, relationship rankings, and commitments are bounded policy-safe projections. Run the commands below in parallel and require exit status 0 before interpreting their output.

```bash
# 1. Bounded live-source person profile.
minutes person "<name>"

# 2. Recent decisions involving them, last 30 days.
#    Clean JSON on stdout by default (insights does NOT accept --json — output is already JSON).
minutes insights --participant "<name>" --kind decision --since <30-days-ago>

# 3. Recent meetings with them, last 60 days. Newline-delimited JSON (one object per line).
minutes search "<name>" --limit 10 --since <60-days-ago> --format json
```

**CLI stream-handling notes** — the Minutes CLI is actively developed and its stream contract is not fully settled. Today (0.8.0):

- `minutes person`, `minutes insights`, and `minutes search --format json` are bounded live-source surfaces.
- `minutes people`, `minutes commitments`, and `minutes person` fail closed on authorization, resource-budget, or correction races. Never suppress a nonzero exit or translate it into an empty fact.
- Any nonzero exit from a live-source command means the source is unavailable. Do not interpret empty stdout as “no history.”
- **Do not invent new flags** on top of what's shown above — e.g. `minutes insights --json` is not a real flag, `minutes export --since` is not a real flag. The CLI will reject unknown flags with a usage error.

If a future CLI release changes any of these contracts, update this skill in the same PR that ships the CLI change.

Before declaring "first meeting on record", verify it with live-source search:

```bash
minutes search "<name>" --limit 1 --format json
```

For multi-attendee meetings, focus on the requested person. Mention the others briefly at the end. Don't try to brief five people at once.

### Phase 2: Read what you actually need

Extract the file paths of the most recent 1–2 meetings from a successful `minutes search` response. Reauthorize and retrieve each meeting through the native bounded surface:

```bash
minutes get "<exact path>" --json
```

Require exit status 0 and use only the returned content. Never pass the path to the host `Read` tool: search results are hints, not retained authorization capabilities.

Don't read more than two — past three meetings is enough context for a brief, and the brief is supposed to fit on one screen.

### Phase 3: Synthesize the brief

Produce a brief in this exact shape — every section is one tight chunk, total fits on one screen:

```markdown
# Brief: <Person Name> · <today's date>

**Last conversation** (<date of most recent meeting>): <2–3 sentences in prose, including the emotional tone if discernible from the transcript>

**They've been thinking about**: <comma-separated list of 3–5 hot topics from the last 30 days, ordered by recency × frequency>

**Commitments**: Use `minutes commitments --person "<name>" --json`; require exit status 0.

**Where things stand**: <one-line read of the relationship vibe — warming, cooling, stable, urgent, drifting>

**Open with**: "<a concrete first sentence the user could literally say at the top of the call — references something specific from the last conversation>"
```

**Concrete example of a good "Open with" line:**

> Bad: "Hey Sarah, how's everything going with Q2?" — generic, could be said to anyone.
> Bad: "Hi Sarah, hope you're doing well!" — pure filler.
> **Good**: "Hey Sarah — last time you mentioned the Q2 hiring freeze was making your roadmap impossible. Did legal come back on the contractor que