Relationships

How Relationships Works

Groupthink Relationships keeps a memory of the people in your life and work, built out of your conversations. Instead of logging every contact and interaction by hand, you paste in notes or let Groupthink capture the call, and it pulls the people and the details out of what was said. You enrich it with your own notes and contacts from there.

Getting Started

Where Contacts Come From

The fastest way to get someone into your record is to capture a conversation with them. Paste in notes from any source, including Granola, Otter, a raw transcript, or something you typed yourself, name the person in the contact field, and Groupthink creates the contact and starts their profile from that first note. You can also import people from a file, such as a spreadsheet, a contact card file or your LinkedIn connections, or add a contact by hand.

Connecting a calendar brings your meetings in and keeps the Last meeting, Next meeting, and Frequency columns current. It also adds the people you meet with as contacts: Groupthink imports your past meetings when you connect (see Google Calendar for how far back) and keeps adding people from new meetings after that. It skips meeting rooms, automated no-reply addresses and large events such as all-hands and webinars. Someone who is only an optional guest on an invite (the people the organizer CC'd) is not added either: Groupthink offers them as a suggested new person, with the meeting they were invited to, and you add the ones you want. Anyone you added from an optional invite before this stays in your contacts; use Mute to hide them. It also holds back the people on an invite you have not answered, or have declined, when nobody else on it is a coworker or a contact. They are added once you accept the invite. See Unanswered invites from people you do not know. A person it recognizes in the title of an event with no attendees becomes a contact once you confirm the suggestion (see Personal Events Without Invites below).

Once a relationship exists, Groupthink keeps it current on its own:

• Tracks when you last met and when you are meeting next
• Counts total interactions per relationship
• Adds public facts from the web for people you are meeting for the first time, each with a link to its source (trial or paid plans; paused for now)

For every source Groupthink learns from, and whether each one is on, see Where Groupthink's Memory Comes From.

Accessing Relationships

1. Click Relationships in the sidebar
2. View all your contacts in a sortable, searchable table
3. See interaction frequency, status, and upcoming meetings at a glance

The Relationships Table

Table Columns

Column	Description
Name	Contact name and profile photo (hover the row and click the pencil icon to edit)
Next meeting	Your next scheduled meeting (links to the agenda)
Last meeting (days)	Days since you last met, in person or virtually. Recorded meetings, calls, in-person logs and calendar meetings you confirmed happened count. Texts and emails don't. A contact with no meeting or contact on record shows On calendar and a date instead: the last meeting with them that was on your calendar and is over. See On calendar dates.
Last contact (days)	Days since your last text, email, Slack message or GitHub exchange, or an interaction you logged as Other (physical mail, for example). Meetings don't count here.
Most recent	What the last interaction was and when, such as "Sep 8 · Text" or the title of the meeting. Hover it for the fuller line when the row cuts it short.
Next meeting (days)	Days until your next scheduled meeting
Frequency	How often you want to be in touch with this person
Status	Current relationship status, based on the Frequency you set

The contact email is not shown as its own column, but it powers the search box so you can still find contacts by email address.

Status and the Going Cold filter count your most recent touch of either kind. A text keeps someone off the Going Cold list even though it doesn't reset Last meeting (days).

On calendar dates

A contact added from your calendar often has meetings on your calendar but nothing recorded and nothing you confirmed happened. Instead of a blank, the Last meeting (days) cell shows On calendar and the date of the last meeting with that person that was on your calendar and is over, for example On calendar Aug 12. Hover it to see the meeting's title, when it has one. Their page shows the same thing in its header as On your calendar Aug 12.

This is a fact about your calendar, not a meeting. It does not change the day count, how the column sorts, Status, or the Going Cold filter. Once you record a meeting with the person, log an interaction, or text or email them, the real dates take over and the On calendar date goes away. Upcoming meetings, cancelled events and a meeting still in progress don't count.

Search and Sort

• Search bar at the top filters contacts by name or email
• Column headers are clickable to sort by any column
• The default sort lists the people you met most recently first. Anyone you are meeting today comes above them, even someone you have never met, and their Next meeting reads "Upcoming: Intro call · today".
• Pagination at the bottom lets you navigate through all contacts

Editing Contact Names

1. Hover over the contact row and click the pencil (edit) icon next to the name
2. Type the new name
3. Click the check icon or press Enter, and the change saves automatically

AI agent contacts (Claude Code, Codex, ChatGPT) have no pencil in the list, because their names come from a fixed list rather than being typed. If a capture misheard an agent's name, for example "Cloud Code" instead of Claude Code:

1. Open the contact and click its name at the top of the page
2. Choose the right agent from Pick the agent
3. Click Save

If you already have a contact for that agent, Groupthink combines the two into one contact. Everything captured on the misheard contact moves to the one you picked. The Groupthink note-taker contact cannot be renamed, and neither can the Claude and Dots contacts that appear when you hand them a task.

Suggested Names for Contacts Known Only by Email

Some contacts have no name, only an email address, such as catherine@cosipa.gov. When you open one of these contacts, Groupthink may show a suggested name near the top of their page.

• A person: the suggestion reads like Catherine (SIPA)?. The part in brackets is the organization, read from the email domain. It is left out for personal email providers such as Gmail. Under the name, Groupthink says where the guess came from: the name on a calendar invite, how they sign their email or texts (for example "Best, Catherine Ruiz" at the bottom of an email from them), or their email address. A signature only counts when it matches their address, so your own signature on mail you sent them is never suggested as their name. A guess can also come from a note you wrote about them, such as a quick log that says you met Catherine Ruiz at the SIPA board. A name in a note counts only when it fits their address, and no line says where this kind of guess came from. Click Save to make it the contact's name, or Not right to turn it down.
• A shared address: for an address like staff@ or board@, or one whose email is signed by several different people, you see Looks like a group address and no name to save. You and the people already in your contacts are not counted among those people. The Advisor does not count a group address as one of your people, so it stays out of how many people you have and who you need to catch up with. If it is really one person's address, click Not a group. Groupthink then counts them as a person again, and if a calendar invite gives them a name, it suggests that name for you to Save. If no invite names them, type a name yourself as described above.

Nothing changes until you click Save. A suggestion you turn down is not offered again for that address.

Adding Contacts

Add a Single Contact

Click Add contact in the toolbar to manually create a relationship:

1. Enter the contact name (required)
2. Optionally add their email address
3. Click Save

This is useful for adding people you want to track before you have a meeting with them.

Import People from a File

Click Import people in the toolbar on the Relationships page. If you have no contacts yet, click Import people from a file under the main button instead. The import opens right on that page.

1. Choose where they are coming from. Pick A file for a CSV from a spreadsheet or another contacts tool, or a contact card file (.vcf). To make one on a Mac, select people in the Contacts app, then choose File, Export, Export vCard. Pick LinkedIn connections to bring in the people you are connected to on LinkedIn. The screen shows the steps for getting the file from LinkedIn: ask for a copy of your data that includes Connections, then choose the Connections.csv file from the download.

2. Click Choose file and pick the file. A file can be up to 4 MB and hold up to 5,000 people. For a bigger file, split it into smaller files and import each one.

3. Check the columns. Groupthink guesses what each column holds and shows a few sample values from it. If a guess is wrong, pick the right one from the menu next to it: full name, first name, last name, email, phone number, birthday, mailing address, how to address them, partner, anniversary, company, job title, or Don't import to leave the column out. After you change a column, click Update the list below to see what your change does. You can't import until you do.

4. Choose who to bring in. The people in the file are split into groups, each with Tick all and Untick all:

   • New people start ticked. A row with an email address but no name is a new person too, shown by their email address, with a line under it saying so. They keep showing as their email until you give them a name. Someone with the same name as a person you already have is marked Possible duplicate, links to that person, and starts unticked. Tick them if they are a different person.
   • Adds to people you already have lists rows that share an email address or phone number with someone you have. Each row says which one matched and links to that person, lists what it would add, and shows where the file says something different from what you have. These all start unticked. Tick the ones that are the same person. A row that is the same person as an earlier row in the file says so too.
   • Can't be imported lists rows with no name, email or phone number, and rows with only a phone number and no name. Each says why, for example No name. Add one to the file, or leave it out. They can't be ticked. A row with only a phone number that matches someone you already have is not left out: it adds to that person.

   Under a row, a Left out line names any value Groupthink could not read, such as an email address that isn't one or a birthday that could be read two ways. Each group shows 50 rows at a time, with a button to show more.

5. Click Import (it shows how many people you ticked). When it finishes, you see how many new people were added, how many people you already had got new details, and how many addresses and other details were filled in. If some people were not imported, choose the same file again to try them: the list shows who is already there.

Click See your people to go back to your list, or Import another file. Before you import, Choose a different file starts over, and the close button at the top right leaves without importing anything.

On a person's page, a detail filled in from a contact card file says it came from your address book, and one from a CSV or LinkedIn file says it came from a CSV. See Details that came from an import.

Log an Interaction

Click Log interaction to put a conversation into a contact's record by hand:

1. Select a contact
2. Add anyone else who was there, an optional title, and the date
3. Say how it happened, and paste any notes you have
4. Click Save

Notes accept any format: raw notes, Granola exports, pasted transcripts, Slack threads, or any other text. A title on its own is enough when the title is the whole story. For something that ran longer than a day, like a visit or a trip, click + End date and set the last day. Full walkthrough: Log an Interaction.

Merging Duplicate Contacts

Sometimes one person ends up as two contacts, for example one under a work email and one under a personal email. You can merge the two into one.

When Groupthink thinks two contacts are the same person

When Groupthink finds a contact that looks like a second copy of the person you have open, a box at the top of their page asks Is this the same person as and the other contact's name, with their email in brackets when they have one. On your own contact it asks Is this you? instead. A line under the question says why the two look alike.

• Merge… opens the merge dialog described below, with the other contact already picked and one of the two already chosen under Which record to keep?. You can change that choice. Nothing is merged until you click the merge button in the dialog.
• Not the same closes the question for that pair, and it isn't asked again.

The box asks about one match at a time. When you answer it, the next match, if there is one, takes its place.

The Relationships page shows every pair Groupthink is unsure about in one place. Click the Possible duplicates chip above the table, which shows how many pairs are waiting, to open the list. Each row asks whether the two are the same person and has the same Merge… and Not the same buttons.

Merging two contacts yourself

1. Open either of the two contacts from the Relationships table.
2. Click the three-dot button at the end of the row of buttons that starts with Log, then click Merge duplicates….
3. A dialog opens, titled Merge another contact into and the name of the contact you opened. Type in the Search contacts by name or email box and click the other contact. The list shows up to 25 contacts at a time, so type a name or an email to narrow it.
4. Under Which record to keep?, pick one of the two. The contact you opened is picked to start with.
5. If the two contacts have different names, such as "Chad" and "Chad Skurdahl", pick one under Which name to keep?. Groupthink picks one to start with.
6. Read the warning and the Preview, then click the Merge into button, which ends with the name the merged contact will have.

The list only shows contacts of the same kind as the one you opened, so a person and an AI agent can't be merged.

If both contacts are linked to a Groupthink account someone has signed in to, and not the same account, clicking Merge into doesn't merge them yet. The dialog says they may be two different people and names which one keeps its account link. With Kate Morrow as the contact you are keeping, it reads: Kate Morrow and Kate are linked to two different Groupthink accounts, so they may be two different people. If you merge them, Kate Morrow keeps its account link and Kate's is dropped. Click Merge anyway to merge them.

To choose a different second contact, click Pick a different contact. Cancel closes the dialog and changes nothing.

If you got here from Should this be someone else? under something you typed in the capture box, the dialog is titled Who should and the new contact's name be? instead. The contact you pick is the one kept, unless you change it under Which record to keep?

What a Merge Does

Before you confirm, the dialog names the contact you are not keeping and says what happens to it. With Kate as the contact you are not keeping and Kate Morrow as the one you are, it reads: This soft-deletes Kate. Their emails, details, open threads, and history move to Kate Morrow.

The contact you keep:

• Keeps its page, with the name you chose. If only one of the two has a real name, that name is kept without asking: an email address or a phone number is never kept over a person's name. So merging "Chad Skurdahl" into a contact named "cskurdahl@hotmail.com" leaves one contact named Chad Skurdahl.
• Keeps its main email address and main phone number. The other contact's email addresses and phone numbers are added as extra ones. An email address both contacts had is listed once.
• Gets the other contact's history. Conversations and notes, meetings, facts, open threads, action items, drafts, roles and project memberships all move over. A meeting both contacts were linked to is linked once.
• Keeps its own answer where the two disagree. That covers its main role, its Frequency, and standing details such as a mailing address or an anniversary. Where the contact you keep has nothing set, the other contact's value is used.
• Takes over anything waiting for your answer. A suggestion from the Advisor waiting for your YES, a suggested role on the person's page, or a guessed name moves to the contact you keep, and you can still confirm it there. If both contacts had the same Advisor suggestion waiting, you are asked once.
• Takes the other contact's Groupthink account link if it is not linked to an account someone has signed in to and the other contact is.
• Shows the most recent last meeting and last contact of the two, and the sooner of the two next meetings.

The other contact no longer appears in your Relationships table. If that is the contact you had open, Groupthink takes you to the one you kept.

Undo a merge

After a merge, the page of the contact you kept shows a line for it, such as Kate was merged into this person 5 minutes ago., with an Undo merge button. Click it to split the two apart again. A message then says the merge was undone and that the other contact is back as a separate person, with a link to open them.

Undoing a merge puts both people back as they were before the merge: the history, emails and phone numbers that moved go back to the other contact. Anything added to the kept contact after the merge stays on the kept contact.

Undo has limits:

• Only from the contact you kept. The button is on that contact's page and nowhere else.
• Only until something changes. If either contact, or anything the merge moved, has been edited since, Undo stops and a message lists what changed. The merge stays as it is.
• Not for older merges. Merges made before Undo merge was added don't show the button.
• Once. After you undo a merge, its line goes away.

So check the names in the dialog before you click, and undo soon if you merged the wrong pair.

You can also merge two contacts from an AI assistant connected to Groupthink. See Merging two contacts that are the same person.

Finding Relationships That Need Attention

Going Cold Filter

Click Going Cold in the toolbar to filter your contacts down to relationships that are going quiet. It shows the people you have been quiet with for longer than is normal for them: past the cadence you set, or, if you set none, past the rhythm you usually keep with them. People set to None never appear. See Staying in Touch.

Click the button again to return to the full contact list.

Waiting On You Filter

Click Waiting on you in the toolbar to see the people whose last text to you hasn't had a reply. Someone is on it when their text is the last one in the conversation and they sent it between 3 and 30 days ago. The number on the button is how many people are waiting, and each row says how long, for example texted you 5 days ago. Hover it to see when their last text arrived. These are the same people as Reply owed on Today, without Today's limit of 10.

The filter reads the texting statistics the Groupthink app on your Mac sends (counts and dates, never what was said), so the button appears only once your Mac has sent them. A text only counts when the number or Apple ID it came from is saved on the person: texts not linked to anyone won't show here. Muted people are never on it.

Click the button again to return to the full contact list. Going Cold, Muted and this filter turn each other off.

Lists

A list is a set of people you keep up to date for one purpose, like the people who get a holiday card. Tick people and click Add to list, or pick a list from the List menu next to the search box to see who on it is missing a mailing address or hasn't had theirs confirmed in a year, fix addresses in the row, and download the list as a spreadsheet. See Lists.

Muting a Person

Some people end up in your contacts without being part of your life: someone copied on a meeting invite, a vendor who wrote once, one of your own test addresses. You can mute them. A muted person keeps their record, so a later invite or email from the same address does not create a second contact, but they are off the Relationships list, Today, check-ins, briefs, suggestions and the Advisor, and nothing automatic is added to their record while they are muted: calendar sync, email, texts and recaps skip them. What you log by hand on a muted person still saves.

Mute one person

1. Open the person, from their row on the Relationships list or from a meeting.
2. Click the three-dot button at the end of the row of buttons that starts with Log, then click Mute.

A message at the top reads Muted. They won't show up or be updated. with an Undo button, and the person leaves the list. If you opened them from the list, the panel closes.

Mute several at once

1. Tick the box at the start of each row you want to mute. The box at the top of the column ticks every row on the page.
2. Click Mute in the toolbar. The number on the button is how many rows are ticked.

The same message appears, with the count, and Undo puts everyone back.

Find and unmute someone

Once anyone is muted, a Muted button appears in the toolbar next to Going Cold, with the number of muted people on it. Click it to see only the muted people, each with an Unmute button on their row. Click Unmute to put the person back on every surface. Unmuting doesn't bring back the email or texts that were skipped while they were muted. Click Muted again to return to the full list; the button goes away once nobody is muted.

A muted person's own page shows a quiet Muted line under their name with Unmute beside it, and the three-dot menu offers Unmute in place of Mute.

Muting never deletes anything, and you cannot mute your own record. Groupthink never mutes anyone for you: a person is muted only when you mute them.

Meeting Preparation

Use Relationships to prepare for upcoming meetings:

1. Sort by Next meeting to see who you are meeting with soonest
2. Review interaction history using the Last meeting, Last contact and Most recent columns
3. Click the meeting link in the Next meeting column to go directly to the agenda
4. Check the Daily Brief for a relationship-aware view of your day

Personal Events Without Invites

Not every meeting comes with a calendar invite. If you block time on your own calendar for "Dinner with Alex" or "Pilates with Maya" without inviting anyone, there are no attendees for Groupthink to detect, but the title says exactly who you're seeing.

When Groupthink spots a name in the title of an event with no attendees, it asks whether that event is with someone you know. Confirm the suggestion and:

• The event links to that person's profile
• It appears as their Next meeting in the relationships table
• Their relationship page shows it as your next planned time together

If the suggestion is wrong, dismiss it. Groupthink won't ask about that name on that event again.

On an event that repeats, like "Pilates with Maya" every Tuesday, you answer once. Confirming links Maya to every later Tuesday that hasn't happened yet, and dismissing stops the question on those weeks too. Weeks that already happened are left as they were.

When your answer covers later weeks, a message at the bottom of the page says so on the web: "Linked to Maya every time this event repeats from now on" after you confirm, or "Won't ask about Maya on this repeating event again" after you dismiss. It stays for about ten seconds and has two buttons:

• Undo takes the answer back on this week and the later ones, and the question comes back.
• Just this one keeps your answer for this week only. Later weeks ask again.

After the message is gone there is no Undo, so use it while it is showing. An event that doesn't repeat shows no message.

This works even on messy real-world titles. Events synced from other tools often pick up extra decoration: a leading emoji, a location in parentheses, a "- CONFIRMED" tag, or "w/" instead of "with". A title like "🧘 Pilates w/ Maya (Downtown Studio) - CONFIRMED" still resolves to Maya.

Nothing links without your confirmation, and if you later delete the event from your calendar, the next-meeting information clears automatically.

Connected Features

Relationships powers several other Groupthink features:

• Meeting Prep in Your Daily Brief - Personalized briefings gathered into the evening Daily Brief the day before your meetings, with professional background, past interactions, and conversation tips for each attendee
• Meeting Prep Cards - In-app attendee cards shown on the agenda page before meetings start, with LinkedIn links, conversation tips, and the names and dates of your recent meetings with each person
• MCP Server - Query your relationship data from Claude Desktop using natural language (e.g., "What is my history with john@acme.com?")
• Daily Brief - A relationship-aware daily view that helps you review prep, follow up with recent contacts, and act on relationships going quiet

Data Quality

Rich Profiles

You will see the most complete information for:

• Registered Groupthink users
• Professionals with public online profiles
• People you have met with multiple times
• Contacts you have enriched with pasted meeting notes

Limited Data

Some contacts may show minimal information:

• New contacts without public profiles
• Generic email addresses (info@, support@, etc.)
• Recently changed job information

Even basic contact information helps you prepare for meetings. You can always enrich a profile by pasting meeting notes or editing the name.

Linked People on Meetings

Every meeting you record has a Linked People row that shows which contacts are connected to it. Anything Groupthink extracts from the meeting updates the linked profiles, so the next time you talk to one of them, the latest context is there.

Calendar invitees and people who joined the call link automatically. You can also add anyone who came up in the conversation but wasn't there, or remove anyone whose profile shouldn't get updated from this meeting.

See Linked People for the full rundown.

Privacy and Control

• Relationship data is only visible to you
• Data comes only from the sources you connect or hand to Groupthink yourself. The full list is in Where Groupthink's Memory Comes From
• Not shared with meeting participants
• You control which meetings are included via calendar settings

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I manually add contacts?

Yes. Click Add contact in the toolbar, enter a name and, if you have it, an email address, and click Save.

The same person is in my contacts twice. How do I fix it?

If Groupthink has spotted the pair, the top of either contact's page asks whether the two are the same person. Click Merge… there. Otherwise, open one of the two contacts, click the three-dot button, and click Merge duplicates…. See Merging Duplicate Contacts.

If you merge the wrong two, open the contact you kept and click Undo merge. That works only until either contact is edited. See Undo a merge.

Can I add notes from meetings that happened outside Groupthink?

Yes. Click Log interaction to attach notes from any source: raw notes, transcripts, Granola exports, Slack threads, or any other text. See Log an Interaction.

How far back does Groupthink track relationships?

Groupthink imports your past meetings when you connect a calendar: the last 12 months on the Free plan, and up to 3 years during your trial or on Pro. From then on it keeps up as new meetings happen. See Google Calendar.

What about group meetings?

Group meeting contacts appear in your relationships table. Relationship metrics are most accurate for 1:1 meetings.

What about personal events where I didn't invite the other person?

If an event on your calendar names someone in the title but has no attendees, like "Date night with Ines", Groupthink suggests linking it to that person. Once you confirm, the event counts as your next meeting with them. See Personal Events Without Invites above.

How do I find relationships that need follow-up?

Click the Going Cold filter to see the people you have been quiet with for longer than is normal for them.

Does this work with all calendar types?

Yes. Works with both Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook calendars connected to Groupthink.

Getting Help

Questions about Relationships? Email support@groupthink.com