references/transcript-quality-guidance.md

# Transcript Quality Guidance

Assess quality before drafting, but continue without questions when a useful record remains possible.

- Minor noise: silently repair punctuation, fillers, repetitions, and obvious transcription slips when meaning is secure.
- Fragmented passages: reconstruct only the supported gist and retain qualifications.
- Missing or uncertain speaker labels: follow the attribution ladder; do not guess.
- Gaps or inaudible text: mark only gaps that affect interpretation.
- Conflicting wording or numbers: report the conflict or use cautious phrasing; do not select a preferred version without evidence.
- Truncated source: chronicle the available portion and state the boundary.
- Multiple sessions in one file: separate them when boundaries are reasonably detectable; otherwise flag the ambiguity.

Treat the source as genuinely unusable only when its content cannot support a meaningful account—for example, an empty file, unreadable encoding, or fragments with no recoverable propositions. Then state the exact problem and request a usable source.