Agent access

Free Meeting Transcriber has two local interfaces for agents. Both work on the same vault. MCP is read-only; the CLI can also create and edit meetings.

Interface	Use it when	Output
MCP	The client can run a local stdio MCP server	Structured tool results and resources
CLI	The agent can run shell commands	JSON with --json, or readable terminal output

A reliable workflow

1. List recent meetings or search with a short phrase.
2. Take the meeting ID from the result. Do not guess it.
3. Read meeting details before fetching a transcript.
4. Fetch the transcript only when the notes and summaries are not enough.

MCP is usually easier for reading because the client receives tool schemas directly. Use the CLI when MCP is not available, or when the task needs to create or edit a meeting — MCP cannot write.

What each interface can write

Use these interfaces instead of crawling the vault. They apply the same rules for canonical notes, summaries, speaker names, and transcript rendering.

MCP cannot write: no tool creates or edits a note, action item, or meeting. The CLI can: meetings new creates a meeting, meetings note --set and --append edit a note body, import turns an audio file into a new meeting, and transcribe replaces a meeting’s transcript. meetings export writes only to the file you pass with --output, and replaces an existing file only when --force is passed.

Use the CLIRun commands with JSON output.

Use MCPConnect a local stdio server.