interview-brief

Brief me on this guest

The point of a guest brief is to stop the host asking a question the guest already answered two years ago, and to arrive knowing what the show's own back catalogue says about their subject. Everything here is read-only.

Start from the booking, or from the person

list_interviews gives upcoming bookings sorted by start time — the usual entry point for "who am I talking to next". Note its status semantics: confirmed stays confirmed after the scheduled time passes, so a confirmed booking in the list is not proof it is still ahead.

get_interview returns one booking in full: contact, show, times, timezones and notes. The notes are usually where the reason for the booking lives.

When the ask names a person rather than a booking, search_contacts matches on name, email or company, and get_contact returns their groups, social profiles and a preview of recent notes. list_contact_notes returns the complete note history — the preview truncates, so use the full list whenever the brief is meant to be thorough.

Have they been on before?

This is the part a general model cannot do and the part that makes the brief worth reading.

search_episodes accepts a guest name and finds prior appearances. search_knowledge may hold a guest page — PodMule accumulates one per recurring guest across every episode they appear in, which is a better starting point than re-reading three transcripts. get_knowledge_page returns it in full with citations back to the episodes.

If they are new to the show, say so explicitly. "First appearance" is useful information, and it is easy to leave a brief looking thin when it is actually complete.

What does the show already know about their subject?

Once you know the guest's territory, search_knowledge on that topic surfaces what the show has already concluded about it — from other guests, other episodes. That is where the non-obvious questions come from: the places where this guest's position will contradict, confirm or extend something already on record.