A summary is only as complete as the recording behind it. The recording only knows what it heard — not the detail a client emails through the next morning, the figure they confirm on a follow-up call, or anything else that lands after the meeting ends. A context note is a free-text note that lives in the meeting alongside the transcript, and everything in it is included every time you generate or regenerate a summary. Unlike editing a summary directly, it's durable: it survives regeneration, feeds every template, and where it disagrees with the transcript, the note wins.
Adding a context note
Open the client's profile and select the meeting you want to add context to.
Select the Note tab.
Type your note, or click to speak your note.
Select anywhere outside the field to save. Trail saves the note automatically, so there's no save button.
Each meeting has one context note. You can come back and add to it at any time, before you've generated a summary or long after. To dictate a note, your browser will ask for microphone permission the first time.
Seeing when a summary is out of date
Because you can change the note at any time, a summary can fall behind what you've since added. In the template picker, a blue dot next to a template means that template's summary is out of date. If a template group is folded, the dot appears on the group header and moves to the specific templates when you unfold it.
The Summary tab tells you where things stand:
Green tick — no changes since this summary was generated. Nothing to do.
X change(s) — the note, transcript, or template has changed since. Select Show to see an itemised list of what changed and when.
Click Regenerate to resummarise with the added notes. If other summaries of the same meeting are also behind, you'll see a line telling you how many.
Good to know
Everything in a context note goes to the AI. This is not a private or internal notes field. Treat it as an input to the summary, and don't put anything in it you wouldn't want a summary to reflect.
The note doesn't change the transcript. If the transcript itself has the wrong words, that's a job for transcript editing, which tracks the correction against the original. Context notes and transcript edits work together and both show up in the change list.
There's no version history on summaries. Regeneration overwrites.
FAQs
Can I have more than one context note on a meeting?
No. Each meeting has a single note that builds up over time. Add to it as often as you like.
What happens if I want to regenerate a hand-edited summary?
Regenerating replaces a summary completely. If you've made manual edits to it, Trail warns you before it goes ahead. There's no way to recover a hand-edited summary once it's been regenerated, so if you want to keep anything from it, copy it out first.
If the summary hasn't been hand-edited, regenerating happens without a warning.
Will my note appear word for word in the summary?
No. The note is an input, not content that gets pasted in. The AI uses it alongside the transcript and your template, so how it surfaces depends on what you've written and which template you're using.
How do I remove a context note?
Clear the text out of the field, the empty note saves, then nothing further is sent to the AI.
I added context but forgot to regenerate. What happens?
Nothing is lost. The summary is flagged as out of date until you regenerate, so you'll see it next time you open the meeting.
Does a context note apply to every template?
Yes. The note sits on the meeting, so any summary you generate from that meeting includes it.