Using Claude to prepare for meetings with Circl's MCP server
You have a meeting in 30 minutes. You've met this person before - exchanged emails, maybe grabbed coffee at a conference. But you can't remember the details.
Two options: wing it, or spend 15 minutes clicking through Gmail, LinkedIn, and your calendar trying to reconstruct the history. Neither is great.
There's a third option. Ask Claude.
How it works
Circl aggregates your interaction history across Gmail, Calendar, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and manual logs into one timeline per contact. The MCP server gives Claude direct access to that data.
A prompt like this:
I'm meeting Anna Petrova in 20 minutes. Give me a brief -
who she is, our history, anything I should bring up.
Claude queries Circl and returns:
- Who they are - role, company, circles they're in, how you're connected
- Relationship strength - score, trend, last interaction
- Interaction history - recent emails, meetings, and notes with context
- Their company - what it does, other contacts you know there
- Talking points - based on your last conversations and notes
Before: manual prep
Search Gmail for their name. Scroll through threads. Check calendar for past meetings. Open LinkedIn. Try to remember what you talked about. Piece it together.
~15 minutes. Incomplete picture.
After: Claude + Circl
One prompt. Claude pulls contact info, interaction timeline, relationship score, company data, and notes. Returns a structured brief.
~10 seconds. Full context.
The MCP tools
Circl's MCP server exposes 17 tools, organized in three groups:
Read your data
search_contacts - find people by name, email, or company
get_contact - full profile with scores, circles, enrichment, and timeline
get_interactions - interaction history for a contact
get_insights - top scored, neglected, most active contacts
search_companies / get_company - company details and linked contacts
list_circles / get_circle_members - browse your circles
Write to Circl
create_contact - add a new person
update_contact - update existing contact details
add_note / add_company_note - attach notes
log_interaction - record a meeting or call
Manage structure
create_circle / add_to_circle - organize contacts
list_unresolved / match_source - handle unmatched source data
Meeting prep mainly uses the read tools. But after a meeting, you can tell Claude to log the interaction and add notes - without leaving your conversation.
Setting it up
Beyond meeting prep
A few other things people use it for:
- "Who do I know at Company X?" - search contacts by company before a cold outreach
- "Who haven't I talked to in 3 months?" - surface neglected relationships
- "Add a note: Anna mentioned they're hiring a CTO" - log context right after a call
- "Who's in my Founders circle?" - browse circles through conversation