# Read AI Playbook: Ask Read, Ada, Agents, MCP and API > How to use Read AI's AI layer: reports, Meeting Coach, Ask Read, Ada, agents, Readouts, MCP server and API, with the plan gate and a workflow for each. _Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/read-ai-playbook — The Professional's Toolkit · updated November 2026_ --- Most of Read AI's AI layer works on the Free plan. Meeting reports, Meeting Coach, Ask Read search, Ada, the Post-Meeting Recap agent, the MCP server and the REST API all run at $0, with two hard limits: Free covers 5 meeting reports a month (reports shared with you count) and meetings up to 1 hour. The paid line sits at Pro, which costs $15 per user per month billed annually or $19.75 per user per month billed monthly.[1] Pro buys the pieces that reach beyond meetings: Claude and GPT model choice in Ask Read, premium sources such as Google Drive and Salesforce, the Monday Briefing and Topics agents, and unlimited Readouts. **Start on Free, wire up the MCP server, and upgrade only when a gate blocks you.** **5** — Meeting reports a month on Read AI Free, shared reports included, with meetings up to 1 hour; the API, MCP and Ask Read stay free. - **100/min** — REST API requests per user (open beta, Free included) - **14 tools** — In Read AI's MCP server (October 2026) - **1-5 min** — Typical reply time from Ada by email ## Which AI piece needs which plan Read AI spreads its AI features across several plan gates, and the pricing grid does not show all of them. Some features the grid leaves vague, such as Slack, the API and the model picker, are settled in Read AI's help center. This map follows the help center wherever the two differ. Read it before you buy anything. | AI feature | Lowest plan | Condition worth knowing | |---|---|---| | Meeting reports and Meeting Coach | Free | 5 reports a month and meetings up to 1 hour on Free, shared reports included; unlimited reports from Pro | | Ask Read search and chat | Free | Unlimited questions; Drive, OneDrive, Notion, Confluence [p1], Jira, HubSpot and Salesforce sources need Pro | | OpenAI and Anthropic models in Ask Read | Pro | These models search the web only | | Ada (Digital Twin) | Free | Email only; not available in HIPAA workspaces | | Monday Briefing, Topics, Sales Funnel agents | Pro | Also run during the 7-day Enterprise trial; Sales Funnel needs Salesforce or HubSpot | | Readouts for email and chat | Free for 14 days; Pro unlimited | Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams | | MCP server and REST API | Free | Open beta; Workspace members need Downloads turned on | | Coaching moments linked to video | Enterprise | Needs audio and video playback | The trial matters for planning. Every new account gets 7 days of Enterprise at sign-up, with no card, and then drops to Free automatically. That week is the only time a Free user sees the Monday Briefing, Topics and Sales Funnel agents at work, so connect your calendar, email and CRM on day one. One warning first: once a calendar is connected, Read joins every event on it by default and sends the recap to everyone with access, so set Auto-Join Preferences as soon as you connect your calendar, before your first meetings run ([how to control it](/articles/how-to-remove-read-ai)). ## Meeting reports and Meeting Coach: the base layer Every meeting Read joins produces a report with a summary, chapters, action items, key questions and a transcript by speaker, usually within 5 to 15 minutes. The default layout is the Read AI Recap template. Sales teams can switch to stock frameworks such as SPICED, BANT or MEDDPICC, and template rules (up to 10 per user, two conditions each) apply the right one automatically. Applying a template changes only your personal view. Others see it only after an owner or editor publishes that view. Meeting Coach is free and private to each attendee. It scores Clarity, Inclusion and Impact, and Read AI recommends a pace of 130 to 175 words per minute with filler words under 4% of speech. Bias and charisma scores come from video analysis, so they are missing in the EU and UK, with affective metrics turned off, and on desktop recordings. Coaching appears only when Read joins the meeting as a participant. Uploads get none. **Jumping from a coaching moment to the video needs playback, which starts on Enterprise.** > 💡 **Turn on Live Transcription first:** Live meeting data reaches Claude or the API only while someone has the live dashboard open, unless Live Transcription is on in account settings. A practical workflow for a manager: create one template rule that applies MEDDPICC to meetings with external guests, leave internal meetings on the Recap template, and check the Coaching tab after each customer call. Watch both Free limits. The sixth report of the month shows as Out of quota, with no transcript, and in a meeting past 1 hour Read leaves and builds the report only from what it recorded. Upgrading reprocesses reports from the past 30 days, so a mid-month upgrade recovers the calls that ran over the report quota. ## Ask Read: what it searches and when Pro pays off Ask Read, formerly Search Copilot, is Read AI's search and chat layer. It answers with citations from your meeting reports, the web, Gmail, Outlook, your Google, Outlook or Zoom calendars, Slack and Teams, and it has no limit on questions on any plan.[2] It searches only content you can already open. Asked from a folder page, it stays inside that folder unless you switch to searching everything. Slack messages are searched live through Slack's own MCP server and are not stored in Read. Pro changes two things. First, Google Drive, OneDrive, Confluence, Notion, HubSpot, Salesforce and Jira become searchable sources. Second, you can pick OpenAI and Anthropic models. That choice is narrower than it sounds. **Those models search the web only, not your meetings or connected sources.** If your questions are about your own calls, the free default already covers them. So the honest reason to upgrade for Ask Read is the premium sources, not the models. Ask Read can also act. Its four actions are CRM update (HubSpot or Salesforce, so Pro), email, calendar and scheduled updates that email web news on a topic at a set time. Emails are drafted for review and go out only after you type Send it. A sales workflow: ask Ask Read for the next steps from today's demo, push them to the HubSpot deal with the CRM update action, then have it draft the follow-up email. ## Ada, agents and Readouts: work that arrives on its own Ada is Read AI's email assistant, which Read AI also calls its Digital Twin. You copy ada@read.ai on a thread, and it schedules meetings or answers questions about your meetings and work. **Ada does not join meetings.**[3] It works only on meetings Read already processed. Scheduling defaults are 24 to 48 hours of lead time, no weekends and 30-minute slots unless you say otherwise. Before it shares private content such as a transcript, Ada shows you a draft and waits for approval. Replies usually take 1 to 5 minutes, and other people on the thread cannot remove it. Agents run on a schedule. Post-Meeting Recap works on every plan. Monday Briefing needs a paid plan or the trial and is English only; Free users get a basic Weekly Recap instead. End of Week arrives on Thursday in English or Spanish, by email, Teams or Slack. Topics needs a paid plan or the trial (Free gets 14 days of Topic Readouts), and Sales Funnel needs a paid plan or the trial plus Salesforce or HubSpot. The Scheduling agent works only with Google Calendar and the browser extension. Switch on only what you will read. > ⚠ **Agents act without asking:** Once you switch on Read AI's agentic features they act without approval for each action, and Read AI's Terms disclaim liability for what they do. Readouts summarize Gmail and Outlook email and Slack and Teams messages by topic, looking back 30 days when you first connect. They stay private unless you share them and live in the web app only. Free users get them for 14 days after the first connection; Pro keeps them running. Teams users also get Daily Summaries around 8:00 AM on weekdays, with the Monday one covering messages since Friday. ## Connecting Read AI to Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot Studio The MCP server is the fastest way to put meeting data inside another assistant. It is a remote server in open beta, works on every plan including Free, and signs in with OAuth.[4] Read AI names ChatGPT and Codex, Claude (Desktop, Web, Code and Cowork), Microsoft Copilot Studio, Gamma, Perplexity on a paid plan, VS Code and Cursor as clients. In October 2026 the server had 14 tools: list and fetch meetings, search by topic, share reports, manage folders, and send a Read notetaker to a meeting you name. Each client has its own condition. ChatGPT needs an account allowed to connect plugins. Copilot Studio connects through its MCP onboarding wizard and may need a Power Platform admin or maker role. EU users must add a custom connector pointing at Read AI's EU endpoint. Inside a Workspace, members need Downloads turned on, and an admin needs Global Report Access to reach everyone's reports. Check these before rollout. Know the limits before you script anything. Meeting search takes 20 to 60 seconds, returns up to 10 meetings and covers roughly the last 12 months. **Live meeting data reaches Claude or the API only while someone has the live dashboard open, unless Live Transcription is turned on in account settings.** On Zoom, a notetaker sent from Claude joins only if your Zoom account is connected to Read and you are in the meeting. On Teams and Meet it can join without you. The REST API, also open beta and free, has three endpoints: list meetings, retrieve a meeting and retrieve a live meeting. It allows 100 requests per minute per user and returns 10 results per page. There are no static API keys; access tokens expire after 10 minutes and refresh tokens last about six months. For comparison, Otter offers its MCP server on every plan but keeps its public API on Enterprise ([Otter review](/articles/otter-ai-review)). > 💡 **Scope Ask Read with folders:** Asked from a folder page, Ask Read searches only that folder's reports, which keeps answers tied to one account or project. A useful pattern: ask Claude on Monday morning to pull last week's customer meetings through the MCP server, list open action items by account, and draft a one-page status note for the team. Nothing in that loop needs a paid Read AI plan. The only costs are Free's two ceilings, five reports a month and meetings up to 1 hour, and a busy calendar reaches the first quickly. ## Which plan the AI layer justifies Choose by gate, not by feature count. Free covers the API, MCP, Ada, coaching and unlimited Ask Read, so it fits anyone with five or fewer reports a month and meetings under an hour. Pro is the step for premium sources, model choice, the weekly agents and a shared Workspace. Over a year, Pro costs $180 per user billed annually or $237 per user billed monthly, by our arithmetic, a gap of $57. Monthly billing stays cheaper for up to nine months; from the tenth month the annual plan wins. A five-person team pays $900 a year on annual Pro or $1,185 on monthly Pro, by our arithmetic. Enterprise costs $22.50 per user per month billed annually, $7.50 more per user per month than annual Pro, or $90 more per user a year by our arithmetic. For the AI layer that buys one thing: coaching moments you can replay. Nothing else here needs it. Read AI does not offer refunds, so test every gate during the 7-day trial before you pay ([pricing details](/articles/read-ai-pricing)). ## FAQ **Does Read AI's MCP server work in the EU?** Yes, but EU users must add a custom connector or custom MCP server pointing at Read AI's EU endpoint instead of using the standard listing in ChatGPT or Claude. **Can Ask Read in Slack hold a conversation?** No. Ask Read in Slack is free, but each question is answered separately; ongoing threads with memory are not supported. **Can a Workspace admin switch off Read AI's AI features?** Yes. Workspace admins can turn Ask Read, its chat history and individual model modes on or off, and can enable or disable Ada in Workspace Settings. **What does Prepare add before meetings?** Prepare, in the web app only, builds a private pre-read from your connected sources about 36 hours before an eligible meeting and emails it about an hour before; meetings with more than 20 participants get none. ## The bottom line Read AI gives away more of its AI layer than most buyers expect: unlimited Ask Read, Ada, coaching, and full MCP and API access all sit on Free. The real ceilings are five reports a month, shared ones included, and one-hour meetings. Pay for Pro when you need Drive, Notion or CRM data in your answers, or the Monday Briefing and Topics agents. Pay for Enterprise only when replaying coaching moments matters. Everything else is free. ## Sources [1] Plans & Pricing — https://www.read.ai/plans-pricing (2026-11) [2] Read AI help: Using Ask Read to search your meetings and connected apps — https://support.read.ai/hc/en-us/articles/39009378777875-Using-Ask-Read-to-search-your-meetings-and-connected-apps (2026-11) [3] Read AI help: Get started with Ada: Read AI's Executive Assistant — https://support.read.ai/hc/en-us/articles/49436447541907-Get-started-with-Ada-Read-AI-s-Executive-Assistant (2026-11) [4] Read AI help: Read AI API and MCP Overview — https://support.read.ai/hc/en-us/articles/49379985941523-Read-AI-API-and-MCP-Overview (2026-11) [5] Read AI help center — https://support.read.ai/hc/en-us/articles/22307341312275-What-are-the-different-paid-plans-that-Read-offers [6] Read AI Terms of Service — https://www.read.ai/termsofservice [7] Read AI Privacy Policy — https://www.read.ai/privacy-policy ## Products mentioned [p1] Confluence — https://api.colosus.site/m/confluence