Give Claude Code and Codex Your Meeting History (No MCP)

Claude Code and Codex already read files. Keep meetings as Markdown in a folder, add a short CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, and ask. Setup, five prompts, and how files compare with MCP connectors.

Chad Oh·October 28, 2026

The answer first

Claude Code and Codex already read files, so the simplest way to give them your meeting history is a folder of Markdown meetings. Start the agent in that folder, or add the folder to the session you already have open, tell it how the folder is laid out, and ask your question. There is no MCP server to install, no connector to sign in to, and no history window: the agent can open every meeting you have kept.

Shadow saves every meeting that way. It records calls on your Mac without a bot, transcribes on the Mac, and writes each meeting into a folder you choose as plain Markdown, with a guide file at the top that explains the layout to agents. Shadow does not run an MCP server; it does not need one for this.

The rest of this guide shows the setup for both agents, a snippet to paste into CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, five prompts that use the whole history, an honest comparison with tools that offer an MCP connector, and what leaves your Mac when an agent reads a meeting.

What an agent needs

An agent needs three things to work with your meetings:

1. The meetings as text it can open. A transcript and notes per meeting, in files, not behind an app's search box.

2. A map of the folder. Where meetings are, how they are named, and where people live, so it does not waste its context window guessing.

3. Permission, on your terms. The agent reads only the folders you give it, and you decide whether it may write.

Shadow's vault covers the first two. The folder looks like this:

Shadow/
  SHADOW.md
  Meetings/
    2026/
      10/
        2026-10-27 Acme renewal/
          Acme renewal.md
          Transcript.md
          Notes.md
          Outline.md
  People/
    Dana Lee (dana@acme.com).md

Each meeting is a dated folder under Meetings///. The title-named page is the meeting's anchor, Transcript.md holds the speaker-labelled transcript, and Notes.md and Outline.md hold the notes, along with any Meeting Skill results and screenshots. Each page in People/ lists that person's meetings, newest first, with links. SHADOW.md at the root describes all of this for people and agents. The vault guide has the details.

Shadow manages only Meetings/, People/, Unsynced Files/, SHADOW.md and .shadow/, and leaves everything else in the folder alone. Your own CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or a folder of agent notes can live next to them.

Step 1: Keep your meetings in a folder

1. Download Shadow and finish setup. It runs on Macs with Apple Silicon and macOS 14.2 or later.

2. Choose where the vault lives in Settings → Meeting → Vault location. A folder in your home directory, iCloud Drive or Google Drive all work.

3. Turn on Autopilot in Settings → Meeting → Autopilot mode so Listening starts and stops with your calls on Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Slack huddles and other supported apps.

Recording and transcription are free with no history limit. Every meeting stays in the folder whether or not you pay.

Step 2: Open the folder in Claude Code

The direct way is to start Claude Code inside the vault:

cd ~/Shadow
claude

If you are already working in a project and want meeting context there, add the vault as an extra directory instead of switching folders:

claude --add-dir ~/Shadow

Inside a running session, /add-dir ~/Shadow does the same. Claude Code reads the CLAUDE.md file in the folder it starts in, so when you start inside the vault, a short one at the vault root (below) tells it how to use your meetings every time. A folder added with --add-dir is readable, but its CLAUDE.md is not loaded by default, so in that case put the snippet in your project's own CLAUDE.md instead.

Step 3: Open the folder in Codex

Codex works the same way. Start it in the vault:

cd ~/Shadow
codex

Codex reads AGENTS.md files before it starts work, so put the same snippet in an AGENTS.md at the vault root. To work on code with meeting context, start Codex in your repository and add the vault with --add-dir ~/Shadow, and put the snippet in the repository's AGENTS.md.

The snippet: CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md

Save this as CLAUDE.md (Claude Code) or AGENTS.md (Codex) at the vault root. If you start the agent in a project and add the vault, put it in the project's file and write the vault's full path in the first line:

# Meeting history

This folder is my Shadow vault: every meeting I have recorded, as Markdown.

- Read SHADOW.md first. It explains the layout.
- Meetings are in Meetings/<year>/<month>/<YYYY-MM-DD title>/. The title-named
  page has the date and attendees; Transcript.md has who said what.
- People/<name> (<email>).md lists each person's meetings, newest first.
- Search before you read: use rg or grep across Meetings/ to find the right
  meetings, then open those transcripts in full.
- Cite the meeting folder and date for every claim. Quote the transcript line
  when a decision or promise matters.
- Speaker labels can be wrong. If a quote matters, say who the transcript
  attributes it to and how sure you are.
- Do not edit anything under Meetings/, People/ or .shadow/. Save your own
  work to Agent Notes/.

The last rule keeps your meeting files exactly as Shadow wrote them. Shadow does accept some direct edits, such as a meeting title or a transcript line, and syncs them back, but an agent writing to its own folder is easier to review.

Five prompts that use the whole history

These work because the agent reads full transcripts across many meetings, not a few search results.

1. Account history. "Read every meeting with Acme since July. List what we promised, what they asked for and what is still open, with the meeting date for each item."

2. Feature requests. "Go through this quarter's customer calls. List every feature request with who asked, the date and a one-line quote. Save it as Agent Notes/feature-requests.md."

3. Meeting prep. "I meet Dana Lee at 2pm. Read her People page and her last three meetings. Give me a five-line brief and three questions I should ask."

4. Decision log. "Find every decision about pricing in the last 60 days. For each, quote the transcript line, name who made it and link the meeting folder."

5. From meeting to code (Codex or Claude Code in a repository with the vault added). "Read yesterday's design review transcript. Turn the changes we agreed on into a checklist in TODO.md, and flag anything we left undecided."

Prompts 1, 2 and 4 are where a folder beats a connector: the agent can read 30 transcripts end to end, not only the passages a search tool returns.

Files or MCP: an honest comparison

Shadow is not the only way to do this. Some tools write files, and several meeting tools now offer an MCP server, a connector you add to Claude, ChatGPT or another AI app. Here is how they compare for giving an agent your history, from each vendor's own pages on October 28, 2026.

	How the agent reads meetings	History it can reach	Setup	Transcription	Capture
Shadow	Markdown files in your vault, with a SHADOW.md guide	Every meeting, on any plan	Start the agent in the folder	On your Mac	No bot; Autopilot starts and stops with calls
Earmark	A Markdown file per meeting in a local folder	Every transcript it saved	Point the agent at the folder	Streamed to AssemblyAI	No bot; Mac and Windows apps
Granola	MCP connector, signed in with your Granola account	Free plan: notes from the last 30 days, no transcripts. Paid: all notes and transcripts	Add the connector to each AI app	Granola's transcription provider	No bot
Fireflies	MCP connector, signed in with your Fireflies account	What your account and its tools return	Add the connector to each AI app	Not stated on the pages checked	A bot joins by default; the desktop app can record without one
Otter	MCP connector with search and fetch tools, signed in with OAuth	What your account and its tools return	Add the connector to each AI app	Not stated on the pages checked	A bot joins by default; the desktop app can record without one

A few honest notes on the table:

Earmark makes the same argument this guide does. It saves a Markdown file per meeting and its own guide recommends claude --add-dir on that folder. The differences are where transcription happens (Earmark streams audio to AssemblyAI; Shadow transcribes on your Mac), the price (Earmark Pro is $20 a month; Shadow Plus is $8 billed annually and the vault is free), and what the folder holds (Shadow adds notes, outlines, People pages and a layout guide).
MCP is the better fit in some cases. If you need your meetings from a Windows PC or a phone, if your team shares notes in a vendor's workspace, or if you work in a chat in the browser, which cannot open local files, a connector is the practical route. Shadow does not offer one.
Search tools and full reads are different jobs. A connector returns what its tools return, often search results or one meeting at a time, within rate limits. A folder lets the agent read 30 transcripts end to end, which is what prompts 1, 2 and 4 above need.

Sources: Earmark local transcripts, Earmark security, Earmark pricing, Granola MCP, Fireflies MCP, Fireflies desktop recording, Otter MCP, Otter desktop app, Claude Code memory, Claude Code CLI reference, Codex AGENTS.md.

What leaves your Mac

Shadow records and transcribes on your Mac, and the vault is a folder you control. When Claude Code or Codex reads a meeting, the text it reads goes to Anthropic or OpenAI as part of your conversation, under the terms of your plan with them. That is the same for any agent and any source, files or MCP.

Two habits keep this under control:

Give the agent the narrowest folder that answers the question. Start it in Meetings/2026/10/ for this month, or in one meeting's folder, instead of the whole vault.
Leave out what should not be shared. Meetings you would not paste into a chat should not be in a folder an agent can read. Move them, or start the agent somewhere else.

Shadow never uses your meeting content to train AI models. The privacy guide lists what each Shadow feature sends and where.

FAQ

Do I need an MCP server to give Claude Code my meetings? No. Claude Code and Codex read local files. If your meetings are Markdown in a folder, start the agent there or add the folder with --add-dir.

Does Shadow have an MCP server or connector? No. Shadow's answer is the folder itself. A chat in a web browser, such as claude.ai or chatgpt.com, cannot open local files, so for those you would paste or upload a meeting.

Which other agents work with the folder? Any agent that can read files on your Mac, such as OpenClaw, Cursor or Gemini CLI. Obsidian and any text editor read the same files.

Can the agent write back into the vault? It can, and Shadow keeps files it does not manage. Writing to a folder of its own, such as Agent Notes/, keeps your meetings exactly as recorded and makes the agent's work easy to review.

What does it cost? Recording, transcription and the vault are free forever, with no history limit. AI meeting notes and Skills are part of Plus, at $12 a month or $8 a month billed annually. The agent itself is billed by Anthropic or OpenAI under your own plan.

---

This article was written by Chad Oh, Shadow's AI writer. While we strive for accuracy, AI-generated content may contain errors. If you spot something off, let us know.