granola-to-steno

Granola -> Steno sync

This skill rebuilds Steno's local meeting files from Granola. Steno stores each meeting as two files in a folder it watches:

<STENO_DIR>/output/<stem>_summary.md        # frontmatter + Summary + Transcript + sections
<STENO_DIR>/transcripts/<stem>_transcript.txt

<stem> is YYYYMMDD-HHMM_<slugified-title>. Because the stem is derived from the meeting's date and title, rewriting an existing meeting is a no-op and new meetings are simply added - the whole flow is safe to run repeatedly and on a schedule.

The bundled generator (scripts/steno_gen.py) does the Steno-specific formatting (cleans Granola markdown into the plain-text shape Steno renders, diarises the transcript, writes both files). This skill's job is to gather the raw Granola data into a simple staging folder and hand it to the generator.

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Prerequisites

• A connected Granola MCP exposing list_meetings, get_meetings, and get_meeting_transcript. The MCP server id is environment-specific, so load the tools by name with ToolSearch rather than assuming a fixed prefix.
• Python 3 available in the shell.
• A target Steno directory containing (or able to contain) output/ and transcripts/ subfolders. This is often inside iCloud Drive - see Step 3.

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Step 0 - Gather settings

Decide these up front (ask the user only if not obvious; otherwise use the defaults):

• Time range - default: union of this_week and last_week. For a one-off backfill use last_30_days or a custom range.
• Target Steno directory (STENO_DIR) - see Step 3.
• Language - the language your meetings are in, as a short code (en, fr, de, ...). Defaults to en. Passed to the generator via --language in Step 6.

Step 1 - Load the Granola tools

Load the three Granola tools in one ToolSearch call, e.g.:

ToolSearch { query: "list_meetings get_meetings get_meeting_transcript", max_results: 5 }

Confirm the matched tools belong to the Granola server before calling them.

Step 2 - List recent meetings

Call list_meetings(time_range="this_week") and list_meetings(time_range="last_week") (or the chosen range). Take the union of meeting ids and de-duplicate. If there are none, report "Nothing to sync" and stop.

Step 3 - Locate the target Steno directory

Resolve STENO_DIR in this order:

1. An explicit path the user gave you.
2. A STENO_DIR environment variable, if set.
3. Auto-detect a Steno folder under the user's connected folders. In a shell with iCloud mounted this is typically:

   BASE=$(ls -d /sessions/*/mnt/*CloudDocs* 2>/dev/null | head -1)
   STENO_DIR="$BASE/Steno"
   

   (Adjust the mount glob to the actual workspace layout.)

If you cannot find it, ask the user for the path. Ensure "$STENO_DIR/output" and "$STENO_DIR/transcripts" exist (create them).

iCloud note: files in an iCloud folder can be cloud-only or briefly locked by sync. If a shell command on such a path fails with "Resource deadlock avoided" or the file is cloud-only, fall back to the host file tools (Read/Write) for that file - they download/write through iCloud natively. See Step 6.

Step 4 - Fetch meeting data and transcripts

For the collected ids:

• Call get_meetings(meeting_ids=[...]) in batches of <=10. Capture for each meeting: title, the exact displayed date string (e.g. "Jun 26, 2026 2:30 PM GMT+2"), known_participants, and summary.
• Call get_meeting_transcript(meeting_id) for each meeting. It may return null/empty (no transcript) - that's fine, treat it as an empty transcript.

Step 5 - Write the raw staging files

In your working directory, create granola_sync/<id>/ per meeting and write plain-text .txt files only (do not write .md for staging, and never write a _summary.json):

• meta.txt - exactly three lines, a real TAB between key and value:

  title<TAB><title>
  date<TAB><exact date string>
  participants<TAB><Name A>; <Name B>; ...
  

  Strip emails (<...>), from <Company>, and (note creator) from participant names; separate names with ; .
• summary.txt - the raw Granola summary verbatim (empty file if none).
• transcript.txt - the raw verbatim transcript (empty file if null).

Step 6 - Generate and copy into Steno

Snapshot the existing summaries first so you can report what's new, then run the bundled generator and copy the results into STENO_DIR with retries (iCloud may lock files transiently):

WORK=/path/to/your/working/dir          # holds granola_sync/
SKILL_DIR=/path/to/this/skill           # holds scripts/steno_gen.py
LANG_CODE=en                            # meeting language from Step 0

ls "$STENO_DIR/output" > /tmp/steno_before.txt 2>/dev/null || true

rm -rf /tmp/steno_out
python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/steno_gen.py" "$WORK/granola_sync" /tmp/steno_out --language "$LANG_CODE"

cp_retry(){ for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6; do cp -f "$1" "$2" 2>/dev/null && return 0; sleep 2; done; echo "FAIL $2"; }
mkdir -p "$STENO_DIR/output" "$STENO_DIR/transcripts"
for f in /tmp/steno_out/output/*;      do [ -e "$f" ] || continue; cp_retry "$f" "$STENO_DIR/output/$(basename "$f")"; done
for f in /tmp/steno_out/transcripts/*; do [ -e "$f" ] || continue; cp_retry "$f" "$STENO_DIR/transcripts/$(basename "$f")"; done

Verify by comparing file sizes between /tmp/steno_out/... and STENO_DIR/... — use stat -f %z "$f" on macOS (or stat -c %s "$f" on Linux), which reports the byte size without triggering the iCloud read lock that cmp/diff can. Steno + iCloud Drive run on macOS, so stat -f %z is the one you'll normally need. If any file failed to copy because of an iCloud "Resource deadlock avoided" lock, write that one file through the host file tools instead: read the generated file's content and Write it directly to the STENO_DIR path (the host filesystem handles iCloud natively).

If the generator prints a WARNING: could not parse date ... line to stderr, surface it to the user: that meeting's date could not be read (usually a locale mismatch in the displayed Granola date), so it got a stable placeholder date. The file is still written idempotently, but its date will be wrong until the raw date string parses.

Step 7 - Report

Give a short summary: number of meetings processed, and the list of new titles - those whose *_summary.md was not present in /tmp/steno_before.txt. Do not paste summaries or transcripts into the report.

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Notes for implementers (Steno team)

• The generator intentionally never writes *_summary.json. Steno's list_meetings scans JSON before Markdown and de-dupes by stem; the JSON branch omits session_info.summary_file, which breaks the detail view ("Note not found"). The .md carries everything the parser needs.
• Steno renders the Summary field as plain text and collapses single newlines, so the generator converts Granola markdown into clean text: de-escapes \~ \* \_ etc., turns ### Heading into an UPPERCASE line and - bullet into • bullet, and inserts a blank line between blocks so nothing collapses. Change this only if Steno's renderer changes.
• The output language is a CLI flag: --language <code> (default en). It is written to the frontmatter language field and to the transcript header's Language setting: / Detected language: / Summary output language: lines. Granola does not expose a per-meeting language, so this is a single value for the whole sync run.
• duration_seconds is written as null (unknown), matching what Steno's own writer emits when it has no duration. Granola does not expose a meeting duration.
• An unparseable date falls back to a deterministic placeholder derived from the raw date + title (never now()), so re-running the sync produces the same stem and the meeting is not duplicated. The generator prints a WARNING to stderr in that case.
• Transcript diarisation keys off Me: / Them: / Speaker N: markers and puts each turn on its own line. Meetings with no transcript yield an empty transcript body (and is_diarised: false in the frontmatter).
• Everything is keyed on stem = <date>_<slug(title)>, so the sync is idempotent and append-only by construction. Each file's frontmatter also carries the source granola_id, so if two different meetings ever compute the same stem, a later run can tell "this is the same meeting again" apart from "a different meeting took this stem" and suffix the newcomer instead of overwriting unrelated content.