meeting-assistant/openspec/changes/archive/2026-05-22-add-speaker-identity-references/proposal.md

Why

Speaker identity usage is currently tracked as a denormalized transcript count. That loses which meeting files caused the count and prevents Meeting Assistant from updating past transcript files when an identity is later named or merged.

What Changes

• Store speaker identity meeting participation as reference rows containing meeting note and transcript file addresses.
• Calculate identity usage counts from references when ordering matching candidates.
• Add transcript audit lines to referenced transcripts when an identity is named or two identities are merged.

Impact

• Speaker identity SQLite schema gains a references table.
• Matching, attendee canonicalization, and merge ordering use calculated reference counts instead of a persisted counter.
• Existing databases keep working; legacy transcript-count columns may remain unused.