How I Built a Company Brain From Four Meetings With Claude and tl;dv

I run my own business, and I work in AI, so it makes sense that my AI is set up like my second brain. I’ve used plenty of workarounds over the years, including Notion as a backup memory repository. I use call recordings, and I’ve got it all linked up to my accounting software.

As someone who also works inside other businesses, I use my company brain to run all the admin. It helps me stay organized, know what’s going on and what’s planned, and manage myself. I still occasionally have to open the odd app or make a decision myself, which is important for keeping a human in the loop. But the same setup that keeps a freelancer on track works for a whole team, so I want to show you how easy it is to set up a company brain using Claude and tl;dv.

How I tested, in short: For the Orrimsby company brain test (October–November 2026), I built a new company brain from scratch for a fictional company. I recorded four scripted Google Meet calls with tl;dv, connected tl;dv to Claude, and checked every answer against a script written before the calls. Then I built the full workflow on top in Claude.

What Is a Company Brain?

A company brain is a shared memory of what your company knows, which your team and its AI assistant can both ask questions of and get sourced answers from. It pulls together what you’ve written down and what was said on your calls, so nothing important lives in one person’s head.

The term caught on in 2026, after Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan open-sourced his own memory system, GBrain. Y Combinator then listed “Company Brain” in its Summer 2026 Requests for Startups.

Company Brain vs Company Knowledge Base: What’s the Difference?

A company knowledge base is what your team writes down on purpose: processes, policies, how-tos. A company brain includes all of that, plus everything that was only said out loud, like the call where a client changed the scope halfway through. And an AI assistant can answer from both.

Keep writing things down. A company brain doesn’t replace that habit, it makes it more useful. Your knowledge base is where the things that should never change by accident live, like pricing rules or your onboarding process. Your meetings add the context around them, and every recorded call adds to the brain without extra effort.

In my test, the best answers came from using both at once.

Why Are Meetings the Missing Half of Most Company Brains?

Meetings are where the reasons behind decisions get said out loud, and plenty of it never makes it into a doc. Slite’s 2026 survey of 149 of its readers lists wikis, chat, drives and email as the places company knowledge lives. Meetings don’t make the list. Ramp put it plainly in October 2026: “The most valuable context isn’t written in a doc.”

It’s a gap people feel. One product manager on Reddit put it this way: “I’m trying to figure out the best way to create a persistent ‘project brain’ so AI can pull relevant context across all of it.” (u/encoreyessir, r/ProductManagement, February 2026)

And a lot of meetings are never planned at all. 57% of meetings are ad hoc calls with no calendar invite (Microsoft Work Trend Index, June 2025), so the decisions made in them are easy to lose.

Internal calls are often the most useful of all. Someone hears a client call and comes away with their own version of it. The internal call afterwards fills in the history and shows where knowledge isn’t being shared.

How to Build a Company Brain From Your Meetings, Step by Step

Building a company brain from meetings takes five steps: capture, connect, organize, ask and automate.

1. Capture: Record the Right Meetings, and Tell People

Put in customer calls and the internal meetings where decisions get made. Keep out HR conversations, legal discussions, performance reviews and personal one-on-ones.

A company brain is only as complete as the recordings feeding it, so set tl;dv to record your calls and check it’s there when the call starts. Tell people the notetaker is there. If you use Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams with different clients, one tl;dv account covers all three.

2. Connect: Link Your AI Assistant by MCP or API

There are two ways to get meeting data to an AI assistant:

• MCP: Claude reads your meeting tool directly when you ask a question. Best for people asking questions every day.
• API: your own script pulls meetings, transcripts and notes into another system. Best for teams building their own brain or automations.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the plug that lets an AI assistant read another app. Connect tl;dv’s MCP server and Claude can search every call you can access. Our guide to MCP explains it, our Claude MCP guide covers connecting Claude, and our guide to connecting meeting notes to Claude walks through tl;dv’s setup.

The API route takes more work but gives you full control. tl;dv’s API can list meetings and fetch each one’s transcript, notes and recording, ready for a developer to feed into your own system.

3. Organize: Give the Brain Rules and a Glossary

An AI assistant answers better when it knows how your company talks. I set up a Claude Project for the test company with:

• Instructions: answer from meetings first, always link to the moment in the call, and say when it isn’t sure.
• A small knowledge base: four text files written for the fictional company: a glossary of client names and codes, a pricing policy, an accounts list and the onboarding steps.
• Sharing defaults: decide who can see which calls before anyone asks questions. With a shared tl;dv workspace, the AI could answer from a fellow tl;dv writer’s recordings as well as mine.

If you’re starting from scratch, four files are enough: a glossary, your pricing rules, a list of active accounts with their contacts, and your onboarding or delivery steps. Keep each one short and plain, and update it when a call changes something. Our guide to Claude Projects covers the setup.

4. Ask: Question Across Calls, Then Check the Transcript

The best questions look across calls, not inside one. “Which accounts mentioned a competitor this week?” found every account that named our fictional rival, plus an internal call flagging the trend.

The most useful questions mix calls with the knowledge base. I asked what our pricing policy allowed for Bramblecote, whose contact had asked for single sign-on and mentioned a rival’s lower quote. Claude quoted the contact from the call, checked each point against the policy file, and worked out that matching the rival’s £15,000 would be a 17% discount, above the 10% that needs the Head of Sales’ sign-off. It also checked names against the glossary.

Another question that only works with both: “What has every account told us about payroll software, and which onboarding step does that affect?” Claude found that one customer runs Sage and needs an export that goes straight into it, and that another was stuck at step 2 of our onboarding, payroll export set-up, waiting on a fix the team had promised. No single call or document held that answer. Together, they did.

Every quote came with a link to the moment, and the one I clicked opened tl;dv’s player at 03:52, the exact line.

Then check the answer against the transcript before you act on it. With a link to the exact moment on every answer, that takes seconds.

Three questions worth copying into your own company brain:

• “What did we promise this client on our last two calls, and has anyone followed up?”
• “Which accounts raised a price concern this month, and what did we say back?”
• “What did the team agree in this week’s internal meeting, and who owns each action?”

5. Automate: Get One Weekly Insight Without Asking

Claude Pro can run a prompt on a schedule. I set up a task called “Weekly account risks” for 9am every Monday: “Use the tl;dv connector. Look at last week’s calls. List any account that mentioned a competitor, a price concern or a delay, with a link to the moment, and who owns the follow-up.”

A version of it run by hand for our test week covered all four accounts with an owner and a link for each, and flagged that the security questionnaire’s “Friday the seventh of November” is a Saturday.

The report also caught two things a busy team could easily miss. One customer’s renewal hadn’t included a discount after all: they’d asked for 10%, and we’d offered two free training sessions instead. And a budget looked too low: £12,000 against about 85 seats on a £300-per-seat annual plan. Claude flagged the budget as uncertain and worth checking, not a fact to act on, which is exactly how a weekly report should work.

What a good weekly report gives you:

• Every account in one table, with competitor, price and delay risks side by side
• An owner for each item, so nothing sits with “the team”
• What’s due now, with the promise and the date it was made
• A link to the moment for every point, so checking takes one click

When you write your own weekly prompt, name the connector, set the date range, and ask for an owner and a link for every item. That keeps the report short enough to read on a Monday morning, and every point is one click from the call it came from.

Scheduled tasks run “without asking”, so Claude won’t pause for approval. And the task can reach every connector on the account, not just tl;dv. Only the prompt keeps it to your meetings, so connect nothing to that account that you wouldn’t want read unattended.

Company Brain Workflows by Team

A company brain earns its keep when you ask it the same question every week, whether you’re a team of fifty or a team of one.

Freelancers and solo businesses. On your own, there’s nobody to remind you what you promised.

1. Record your client calls with tl;dv.
2. On Monday, ask Claude: “What did I promise each client last week, and what’s due this week?”
3. Check anything important against the transcript, then add it to your plan for the week.
4. Save anything that changes a process to your knowledge base, so next month’s answers are even better.

Marketing and agency teams.

1. Record every client call with tl;dv.
2. Before building a deck, ask Claude: “What deliverables have we agreed with this client? What do they still want done? Any deadlines?”
3. Check anything important against the transcript, then save the answers to the client’s page in your knowledge base.

Sales.

1. Record every discovery and demo call and link it to the deal.
2. Before a follow-up, ask: “What objections and budget did this prospect mention, and what did we promise?”
3. Approve any CRM updates by hand. AI suggestions are a draft.

Customer success.

1. Record renewal check-ins and internal account syncs.
2. Before a renewal, ask: “What problems has this customer raised, and what did we commit to fix?”
3. When a new team member joins, point them at the account’s calls instead of a handover document.

How Accurate Is a Company Brain Built From Meetings?

On six questions about four scripted calls, Claude got every answer right through tl;dv’s MCP, checked against a script written before the calls.

The trap question is the one to watch. 77% of respondents in Slite’s survey named accuracy as their top concern about a company brain. On the trap question, Claude got it right.

To run the same test on your own calls, start a tl;dv Pro trial and connect it from Claude’s directory.

Tips for Better Answers From a Meeting-Based Company Brain

A few small habits make a meeting-based company brain more accurate.

Keep a glossary of names and codes. Unusual client names and made-up project codes are the words most worth double-checking in a transcript. With a glossary in the knowledge base, Claude checks them for you. Spelling codes out on the call helps too.

Say who owns what out loud. AI notes attach actions to whoever’s account joined the call. A ten-second recap at the end (“I’ll send the file, you’ll book Rhys”) gets the owners right.

Check your plan’s reach. The AI only sees what your plan and permissions allow. tl;dv’s MCP connector works on Pro and above, and each person sees only the calls they already have access to.

Keep a human approval step. Let the brain suggest changes to your CRM or docs, and approve them yourself before anything is written.

Is a Company Brain Built From Meetings Safe?

A company brain built from meetings is as safe as its permissions. With tl;dv’s connector, each person signs in with their own account, so the AI only sees calls they could already see.

What to check before you switch it on:

• Read only. tl;dv’s MCP connector only reads. It can’t change or delete your meetings.
• Owner approval. On Claude Team or Enterprise, the owner switches the connector on first, then each person signs in to their own tl;dv account.
• Training and hosting. tl;dv doesn’t train its AI on your recordings and offers EU data hosting, which matters if you work with European clients.
• Consent. Under UK GDPR, people have the right to be informed when their personal data is collected, so tell people they’re being recorded before the call starts.

The best protection is old-fashioned. I’ve always worked on the basis that if I wouldn’t say something to someone’s face, I wouldn’t say it on a call. A company brain just makes that rule permanent.

Using tl;dv as the Meeting Layer of Your Company Brain

tl;dv records Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls with a bot. Its desktop app records without a bot, on any call that plays through your computer, and the mobile app captures in-person meetings. Its MCP server then lets Claude search across all of them. It’s the setup I use every week. In my test, Claude answered every question correctly through it, and the link I clicked opened the recording on the exact line.

• tl;dv’s MCP connector is in Claude’s directory and needs the Pro plan or higher: $18 per seat a month, billed annually, or $29 monthly (as of November 6, 2026); €18 or €29 (checked October 23, 2026).
• It’s read-only and returns up to 50 meetings per query.
• Every AI-note bullet links to the moment in the recording, so checking an answer takes one click.
• For your own build, tl;dv’s API hands over meetings, transcripts and notes, and Business and Enterprise can run a self-hosted MCP server.

Good to know before you start:

• The MCP connector only reads your meetings, so it won’t update your CRM. tl;dv’s own CRM integrations, like its Pipedrive sync, handle that part.
• Each question covers up to 50 meetings, so for bigger questions, narrow it by date or client.
• Bot-free recording with the desktop app captures audio only, with no video or screen share. For a company brain, the transcript is what matters.

How I Tested

Orrimsby is a fictional UK software company, so no real customer data was involved. A fellow writer at tl;dv played the customers, and each call had a made-up reference code so I could check the answers precisely. I recorded the four calls with tl;dv on October 21, 2026, connected tl;dv to Claude through its MCP server, and asked six questions in a fresh chat on October 22, checking each answer against the script. The test ran on a tl;dv Pro trial. I built the Project workflow and ran the weekly report on November 6, 2026.

The customers were played by a fellow tl;dv writer from one account, so the transcripts show his name for them. On a real call, each person joins as themselves. The same four calls also fed our comparison of meeting MCP servers.

The limits: a fictional company, four scripted calls, six core questions, and one setup, Claude with tl;dv. Real calls with more people will be messier, which is why checking the transcript matters. I’ll rerun this test by February 2027.

Start Your Own Company Brain Today

You don’t need a developer, a data team or a big budget. You need your calls in one place and an AI that can read them. Here’s how to start this afternoon:

1. Sign up for tl;dv and start a Pro trial, so the MCP connector is switched on.
2. Record your next few calls. tl;dv works with Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams.
3. Connect tl;dv to Claude from Claude’s directory. The setup guide linked in the Connect step walks you through it.
4. Ask your first question across last week’s calls, then set up your Monday report.

Within a week, you’ll have a company brain that remembers every call you record, so you don’t have to. For me, that means fewer dropped promises and no more digging through notes to find who said what. For a team, it means nobody waits for a handover again.

Dani Jones

Dani Jonesは英国を拠点とするコンテンツストラテジスト、ライター、ジャーナリストで、B2B SaaS、営業、AIツール、ミーティングインテリジェンスを専門としています。