Spinach joins your video meetings, takes notes, and sends a summary with action items and decisions when the meeting ends. This guide covers what you need in your first week, from signing in to finding answers across all your meetings.

Prefer to watch? This short video walks through everything in this guide.

Some features need a paid plan (Pro, Business or Enterprise), and each section says which ones. You can also use them during a free trial. Other features depend on how your company set up Spinach, so you may not see everything described here.

Quick start

Go to app.spinach.ai. If your company set up Spinach for you, sign in the way your company uses: Sign in with Google, Sign in with Microsoft, or Sign in with SSO. You can also enter your email address and sign in with a one-time code.

The first time you sign in, Spinach walks you through a short setup:

You can change your Recording and Sharing choices at any time; the sections below show where. If your company set up Spinach for you, your setup screens may look different, and some of these choices may already be made for you.

When setup is done, you land on a sample meeting called [Sample] Getting Started with Spinach AI, so you can see what a finished meeting looks like. It disappears once you have five meetings of your own.

Click Schedule in the left sidebar to see your upcoming calendar meetings. The switch at the end of each row turns Spinach on or off for that meeting.

So you don't have to turn on every meeting, click the Auto-record menu at the top of Schedule and choose what Spinach should join:

Then click Save settings. Your Recording choice during setup already set this menu: All meetings on my calendar shows as All meetings, and Only meetings I schedule shows as My meetings. If the menu shows Manually selected meetings, Spinach joins only the meetings you switch on yourself.

Paste the meeting link into Record Live Meeting at the top of Schedule and press Enter. Spinach joins within a couple of minutes, so keep an eye on your waiting room. For more options, see How to get Spinach on ad-hoc, last-minute, or in-progress meetings.

For a meeting in a room, click Quick Record in the sidebar to record from your computer's microphone; in Chrome or Edge you can also include a browser tab's audio (see Quick Record Guide). For a recording you already have, click Upload and choose a video or audio file up to 2 GB (see Upload Recordings).

Spinach works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Webex. It can also join Slack huddles (beta). After you connect Slack, go to Settings, find Slack Huddles under Meeting Platforms, and click Configure. Setup needs someone who can invite members to your Slack workspace, and a paid Slack seat for Spinach.

Spinach joins as a participant named Spinach AI, or the name your company or the meeting's host chose. If your meeting has a waiting room or lobby, admit Spinach like any other guest. It can't take notes until it's in the meeting.

While Spinach is taking notes, its video tile shows Note-taking live. When it's paused, the tile shows Note-taking paused.

Type one of these words in the meeting chat, as a message on its own:

Anyone in the meeting can use these commands. Pause and resume need the Spinach host to be on a paid plan; on the free plan, Spinach replies with an upgrade message instead. Chat commands don't work in Webex meetings. For details, see Off the Record - Pause Button and Remove Spinach from Meetings.

Spinach doesn't post a recording notice in the chat by default. If your company set one up, Spinach posts it in the chat shortly after it starts recording.

While a meeting is in progress, its row on Schedule shows a Rejoin button, so you can bring Spinach back without using the chat.

Every meeting Spinach joins has one Spinach host. The host's settings decide things like the summary template and who receives the summary.

On Schedule, the person icon next to a meeting's name shows the host. A green icon means you're the host. A gray icon means someone else is, and Added by shows who. Hover over the icon to see the host's name.

If you don't want other people adding Spinach to meetings you organize, turn on Block others from adding Spinach to meetings I organize in Settings. To learn more, see Understanding the Spinach Host.

When the meeting ends, Spinach emails the summary to its recipients, unless the host has turned on review before sending (see below). If the host has connected Slack, Spinach also posts the summary in Slack: in the meeting's channel, or the host's Default channel if one is set, otherwise as a direct message to the host. Depending on the meeting's template, a summary has a TL;DR, key topics, action items with owners, key decisions and blockers.

Your Sharing choice during setup decides who receives the summary. In Settings the same options are called All calendar invitees (everyone on the meeting invite, including people outside your company), Calendar invitees from my company, and Just the Spinach Host (just me). If your account was set up without that choice, the default is All calendar invitees. Your company may also have set this for you. Limiting summaries to people from your company needs a paid plan; on the free plan, summaries go to all calendar invitees unless you choose Just the Spinach Host.

To change it for all your meetings, go to Settings, find Meeting Summaries under Communications, and choose All calendar invitees, Calendar invitees from my company, or Just the Spinach Host. This also updates the Spinach meetings you added that are already on your schedule. Choosing recipients, for all your meetings or for one, needs a Pro, Business or Enterprise plan.

To change a single meeting, expand its row on Schedule and change it under Meeting Settings. For more, see How to Modify Summary Recipients.

To check summaries before anyone else sees them, turn on Edit summaries before they publish in Settings. Summaries then wait for you in Drafts in the sidebar. Open a draft, make your edits, and click Send (Save for an uploaded recording). The … menu lets you Select recipients or Archive draft. You can also turn this on for a single meeting with the pencil icon on its Schedule row. Reviewing summaries before they're sent needs a Pro, Business or Enterprise plan. See Edit Summaries.

Click Recordings in the sidebar and open a meeting. The video is on the left, and the tabs on the right show:

Click Share to give other people access (see Share Meeting Summary, Video and Transcript). The … menu next to it lets you Copy Summary, Copy Transcript or Download Video. The host can also Delete Meeting Data.

In a narrow browser window, the video moves into its own Video tab.

Recordings lists every meeting you can access: the ones you hosted, the ones you were invited to, and the ones shared with you. Switch between Grid, Feed and List views, use Search recordings, or click Add filter to narrow by date, recording type, participants, company, title or number of participants.

To search inside your meetings, click Search notes at the top of the sidebar or press ⌘ + K (Ctrl + K on Windows). It searches the transcripts, action items, decisions and blockers of your 100 most recent meetings. Type at least three characters.

To group recordings by client, project or team, use the Collections tab on the Recordings page. You can share a collection with teammates and add rules that file new recordings automatically. See Organize Recordings with Collections and See All of Your Team's Meetings.

Ask questions about your meetings in plain language. Click Ask Spinach in the sidebar. With no meetings selected, Spinach answers from your recent meetings. To focus on specific meetings, click Add meeting context.

A few questions to try:

On a meeting, click Chat with this meeting to open the Ask Spinach panel on the right and ask about that meeting. On Recordings, Chat with your meetings opens the same panel, which answers from your recent meetings unless you add specific ones. On a very wide screen the panel opens by itself. The panel suggests questions to start with, and under Your Custom Prompts you can click Create custom prompt to save a question you ask often.

See Ask Spinach for more.

Click Settings in the sidebar. These are the settings people change most in their first week:

You can connect these tools in Settings. Some depend on your plan or your company's settings.

Under AI Assistants, click Connect next to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor. This opens that assistant's setup page, where you finish connecting Spinach so it can search and read your meetings. For any other assistant that supports MCP, use the address in MCP Server. You can see and revoke connected apps under Authorized applications. Connecting an AI assistant needs a Pro, Business or Enterprise plan. See MCP Configuration.