For anybody who records meetings and has to write the notes
Turn a meeting recording into notes with AI
A meeting recording becomes notes in one question, and the part most tools miss is the screen. Connect Playhead to Claude, give it the recording as a link or a file, and ask for the notes. On a real 12 minute board meeting read on 14 September 2026 the answer came back with 5 agenda items and the second each one starts at, 4 speakers with their roles, 2 motions with who moved them, who seconded them and how the vote went, and 1 action item. A follow-up question then named the 4 slides that were on the screen and the figures printed on them, including 1120 properties in violation and 641 with noxious weeds. Nobody said those numbers out loud, so a tool that only reads the audio cannot report them.
Published 11 min read
The short version
- One question turns a recording into notes. On a 12 minute board meeting it returned 5 agenda items with their start seconds, 4 speakers, 2 motions with the vote, and 1 action item.
- The figures on a shared slide are not in the transcript. This run read 1120 properties in violation and 641 with noxious weeds off a slide that was on screen from 76.0 to 114.6 seconds, and nobody read them out.
- Every line carries the second it happened at, so a number in the notes can be checked by scrubbing to it rather than trusting it.
- A follow-up question about the same recording is answered from the first reading, so asking 5 more questions costs a fraction of asking the first one.
- The answer names the stretches it could not resolve, 2 of them in this meeting, so a quiet passage and an unread passage never look the same.
What is on this page and on no other
Every page about these products carries the same prices and the same feature lists. These are the facts this one produced itself, and how each one was made.
On a 725.67 second public board meeting, one question returned 5 agenda items with start seconds, 4 speakers, 2 motions with mover, seconder and outcome, and 1 action item.
A follow-up on the same recording named 4 slides with their seconds and 6 figures printed on them, including 1120, 641 and 57 per cent, none of which was spoken aloud.
What you need, and what it costs
A recording, an account, and one question. No plugin on your laptop and nothing to install on a phone.
Playhead is a remote MCP server. Connect it once and it answers in Claude Code, in the Claude desktop app, in the Claude mobile app, on claude.ai in a browser, and in any other client that speaks MCP.
The recording can be a link, from Vimeo, X, Reddit, Facebook or any of the other platforms, or a file from your own disk. A file is uploaded once and every later question about it reuses that upload.
That is the whole setup. The rest of this page is the question to ask and what came back when we asked it.
Connect Playhead to Claude
Add the connector once, in the app you already use. Nothing is installed on the device, which is why this also works on a phone.
Give it the recording
Paste the link, or pass the path to the file and run the one upload command that comes back. The id you get works for every later question about that meeting.
Ask for the notes
Ask for the agenda items with their seconds, who speaks, every decision and motion with its outcome, and the action items with an owner where one is named. Say that no name may be invented.
Ask what was on the screen
This is the question a transcript cannot answer. Ask what was shown on the shared screen and which figures were visible, with the second of each. It is answered from the first reading, so it costs a fraction of it.
Read the unresolved list, then decide
The answer names the stretches it could not resolve and prints the call that looks closer at each one. Run those only where the meeting mattered.
curl -X POST https://api.tryplayhead.com/v1/watch_video \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $PLAYHEAD_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url": "https://archive.org/details/dc19mn-City_Weed_Board_Meeting_-_June_13_2022",
"question": "Write the notes of this meeting: the agenda items with the second each one starts at, who speaks, every decision and motion with its outcome, and the action items with an owner where one is named.",
"instructions": "Write plain meeting notes a person can paste into a document. Do not invent a name that was not said."}' \
| jq -r '.answer, .session_id'What came back, on a real meeting
A public board meeting, 12 minutes, read on 14 September 2026. Both blocks below are unedited.
The recording is the City Weed Board Meeting of 13 June 2022, 725.67 seconds, published on archive.org by Dickinson Channel 19, the government access channel of Dickinson, North Dakota. It is a public meeting of a public body, and that is why it is the example here: every figure below can be checked against the recording instead of being taken from us. No customer recording appears on this page.
Agenda items and start times: - Meeting Opening and Roll Call: Starts at 0.0s. - Approval of Previous Meeting Minutes (from June 14, 2021): Starts at 19.3s. - 2021 Noxious Weed Report Presentation: Starts at 51.8s. - Board Discussion and Q&A: Starts at 214.9s. - Adjournment: Starts at 704.3s. Speakers: - Board Chair (opens the meeting, introduces items, calls votes). - Board Members Bruce and Sean (make and second motions, ask questions). - Tiffany Johnson, City Code Enforcement Officer (presents the 2021 Noxious Weed Report and answers questions). Motions and Decisions: - Motion to approve the minutes of the June 14, 2021 meeting moved by Bruce and seconded by Sean at 37.0s. The motion carries unanimously at 51.8s. - Motion to adjourn moved by Bruce and seconded by Sean at 704.3s. The motion carries unanimously at 710.3s. Action Items: - Post updates on the city Facebook page regarding weed notifications and program status (suggested at 653.8s to 660.9s; owner: City Staff / Tiffany Johnson).
Those notes are what a good transcript tool also gets to, because the words carry them. The next block is the part that is not in the words at all.
1. From 76.0s to 114.6s: A slide titled 'Grass & Weeds' containing the text of the ordinance ('growth in excess of 10 inches', '2018 IPMC') along with the numbers 1120 (Total properties in violation) and 641 (Total properties that included noxious weeds, approx. 57%). 2. From 123.0s to 131.3s: A slide titled '2019 to 2021 Grass and Weed Map' displaying an aerial satellite map of the city overlaid with blue highlighted parcels. 3. From 133.0s to 172.6s: A slide titled 'Most Common Noxious Weeds' featuring photographic images and names of four weed species: 'Canada Thistle', 'Absinth Wormwood', 'Leafy Spurge', and 'Yellow Toadflax'. 4. From 175.6s to 205.5s: A slide titled 'City Contractors' displaying contractor statistics with the numbers: 130 (Total Times We Had City Contractors Mow), 82 (Total Properties City Contractors Mowed), and 10 (Total Properties City Contractors Sprayed).
The questions worth asking after the notes
The first question pays for the reading. Every question after it reads what that reading already found.
| Ask this | What you get back |
|---|---|
| What was on the shared screen, with the second of each? | Slide titles, figures and what was scrolled past. The block above is this question. |
| Every number that appeared on screen but was never said | The figures a transcript cannot hold, each with its second. |
| Who committed to what, and at which second? | Action items you can check by scrubbing to the moment somebody agreed. |
| What did the group decide, and what was left open? | Decisions against open threads, so the next agenda writes itself. |
| Read 60 seconds from 640 and tell me exactly what was agreed | One stretch, read closely. Reading a minute costs what a minute costs. |
Keep the session id from the first answer and put it on each of these. A question that carries it is answered from the reading that already happened, which is why five follow-ups cost a fraction of the first question rather than five times it.
What this does not do
Three limits, stated here rather than discovered later.
It does not join your calls. There is no bot that sits in the meeting. You give it the recording afterwards, which is a file or a link, so a meeting nobody recorded is a meeting nobody can read.
It does not know who anybody is. The names in those notes came from what was said and what was on screen. There is no directory of your colleagues behind it, so a speaker who never says a name stays a role rather than a person.
The recording has to reach us. A link is fetched on our side. A file from your disk is uploaded first, and a 67 MB file took 40.6 seconds to upload from a laptop on 14 September 2026. A recording that must never leave your building is a job for something that runs on your machine.
The verdict
Notes written from the audio are half the meeting. On this 12 minute board meeting the words gave 5 agenda items, 4 speakers and 2 motions, and one extra question gave the 4 slides and the 6 figures on them, including the 1120 the whole report was about. Ask for both. The recording already holds the screen, the only question is whether anything looks at it, and the second question costs a fraction of the first.
Common questions
How do I turn a meeting recording into notes with AI?
Connect Playhead to Claude as an MCP connector, give it the recording as a link or as a file, and ask for the notes: the agenda items with their seconds, who speaks, every decision and motion with its outcome, and the action items. On a 12 minute board meeting that one question returned 5 agenda items, 4 speakers, 2 motions with the vote and 1 action item.
Does it work on a Zoom, Teams or Google Meet recording?
Any recording you can hand over works, because what matters is the file rather than the app that made it. Pass a link if the recording is hosted somewhere, or pass the file from your disk and run the one upload command that comes back. Camera and edit suite formats are taken too.
Are the timestamps in the notes exact?
Every second in an answer is measured to a hundredth and is elapsed time from the start of the file, so a line in the notes can be checked by scrubbing to it. In the run on this page a motion is placed at 37.0 seconds and the vote that carries it at 51.8 seconds.
What does it cost to ask more questions about the same meeting?
A fraction of the first question. The first one pays for the reading, and every question after it carries the session id and is answered from what that reading found, so asking five follow-ups is nothing like paying for five readings.