Get a meeting transcript in Python with only the standard library

What it does

urllib.request and json are all it takes: one POST to the MCP endpoint with the get_transcript tool, and every line of the meeting comes back with its speaker.

It needs a key and a meeting code in MEETFUL_KEY and MEETING. Two curl requests make both. MEETFUL_URL is optional and defaults to https://meetful.com.

Python 3.9 or later. The socket scripts use the websockets package (pip install websockets; this ran with 13.1); the transcript script uses only the standard library.

The code

# Get the whole transcript of a Meetful meeting from Python, with nothing to install.
# MEETFUL_KEY=tmk_… MEETING=abc-defg-hij python transcript.py
import json, os, urllib.request
from datetime import datetime, timezone

BASE = os.environ.get("MEETFUL_URL", "https://meetful.com")
body = json.dumps({
    "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 1, "method": "tools/call",
    "params": {"name": "get_transcript", "arguments": {"meeting": os.environ["MEETING"]}},
}).encode()
req = urllib.request.Request(BASE + "/mcp", data=body, method="POST", headers={
    "authorization": "Bearer " + os.environ["MEETFUL_KEY"], "content-type": "application/json"})
with urllib.request.urlopen(req) as res:
    reply = json.load(res)
if "error" in reply:
    raise SystemExit(reply["error"]["message"])
if reply["result"].get("isError"):
    raise SystemExit(reply["result"]["content"][0]["text"])

t = json.loads(reply["result"]["content"][0]["text"])
print(f"{t['lines']} lines in {t['meeting']}")
for line in t["transcript"]:
    at = datetime.fromtimestamp(line["at"] / 1000, timezone.utc).strftime("%H:%M:%S")
    print(f"{at}  {line['speaker']}: {line['text']}")

Run it

MEETFUL_KEY=tmk_… MEETING=abc-defg-hij python transcript.py

What it printed

4 lines in jho-bwva-mia
14:17:03  Dana: Can we move the launch to the third of March?
14:17:04  Sam: Yes, if the docs are ready by the twentieth.
14:17:05  Dana: Then Sam owns the docs.
14:17:12  🤖 python bot: Noted: the launch moves to the third of March, and Sam owns the docs.

Run on 10 November 2026 against a Meetful server built from the same code as meetful.com, with two people — Dana and Sam — in the meeting saying three lines. Nothing above was edited.

How it works

The reply is JSON-RPC: either error, or result. A tool that ran but could not do it — a meeting that does not exist — answers with result.isError and the reason as text, so the script checks both.

Times are milliseconds; datetime.fromtimestamp(at / 1000, timezone.utc) gives a time you can format. Store at as it is if you sort or join lines later — it is the order the server wrote them in.

What can go wrong

Next

In Python: join a meeting · live transcript · speak

The same in Node.js · Go · curl

The whole API · Every socket message and webhook · All guides