I used to be the person hunched over a laptop in every meeting, half-listening and fully typing, because someone had to capture the recap. Sound familiar? Then I came across a post from an AI professional who found a way to stop taking notes entirely, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The original poster is famously picky about accepting meeting invites, and they credit one specific setup for saying yes at all this year.
What grabbed me is how simple the whole thing is. The creator pairs a meeting notes tool called Granola with Claude, and the result is being fully present in a conversation while still getting a clean recap and a follow-up email afterward. No bots joining your calls. No tab-switching while someone is talking. I was genuinely impressed when I saw how few moving parts this takes.
What Granola actually is
The expert describes Granola as Apple Notes, but built for meetings. It doesn’t dial into your call like those awkward recorder bots that make everyone self-conscious. Instead, it quietly captures the full transcript with timestamps in the background while you talk. That one design choice is why the author refuses to enter a meeting without opening it first.
The step-by-step setup
Here’s the exact process the creator laid out, with the reasoning behind each move so you know why it works, not just what to click.
- Download Granola from granola.ai, since it’s the engine that captures everything you’d normally scramble to write down.
- Treat it like Apple Notes for meetings, so there’s no learning curve and nothing new to babysit.
- Trust that it never joins your meeting, which keeps the room human and bot-free.
- Open Granola before every single call, because the transcript only exists if you hit go first.
- Let it capture the full transcript with timestamps, giving you a searchable record instead of messy shorthand.
- Connect it to Claude by going to Claude Settings, then Connectors, then Granola, so Claude can read your meeting context automatically.
- Build your writing voice profile with the copy-paste prompt below, so drafts sound like you and not a robot.
- Save Claude’s answer as project instructions, turning your voice into a reusable template for every email.
- Draft your follow-up right after the meeting using the second prompt below, while the details are still fresh.
- Close out each week by asking Claude for the action items you’re still waiting on, so nothing slips through the cracks.
Once that connector is live, something clicks: everything you write with Claude already carries the context from the meetings you just had. No re-explaining. No digging through notes.
The voice profile prompt
This is the part I found clever. Before you draft anything, the LinkedIn user has Claude study how you already write, so follow-ups don’t read like generic AI. Paste this one exactly as it is:
Read my last 30 sent emails in Gmail. Write my voice profile: how I greet, how I sign off, my sentence length, my go-to phrases, the words I never use. Format it as writing instructions to follow when drafting as me.
Take whatever Claude gives you back and save it as project instructions. That saved profile becomes the rulebook Claude follows every time it drafts on your behalf, so your emails keep sounding like you.
The follow-up prompt
Right after your next meeting ends, the author drops this into Claude. Notice how specific it is about structure and length, which is what keeps the output tight and usable. Copy it word for word:
Pull my last meeting from Granola. Draft the follow-up using my voice profile: what we decided, action items with owners, one clear next step. Keep it as short as I keep mine. Create it as a Gmail draft to the attendees.
You end up with a ready-to-review draft sitting in Gmail, addressed to the right people, written in your voice, before you’ve even refilled your coffee.
Why this matters
The real unlock isn’t the note-taking. It’s that you can finally be fully present in a conversation and still walk away with the recap, the decisions, and the next steps handled for you.
The mind behind this workflow put it in a way that stuck with me: they’re not lazy, they just hate doing the small stuff they can hand to AI. And there’s a nice side effect. The creator now says yes to meetings faster, but only the ones with a solid agenda, because the fear of losing an hour to admin work is gone.
How you can use this today
- For back-to-back days: let Granola capture everything so you stop context-switching between calls.
- For client work: send follow-ups that sound personal and land within minutes, not the next morning.
- For team leads: use the weekly action-item check to track what you’re owed without chasing anyone.
- For anyone who over-commits: protect your calendar, since being present costs you far less time now.
I think this is one of those small systems that quietly changes how your whole week feels. Fewer notes, sharper follow-ups, and actual eye contact in meetings again.
Want the full breakdown in the creator’s own words? Go check out the original LinkedIn post for every detail.