recordist

Features

Everything a notetaker does, on your own machine.

Recordist is for anyone who'd rather be in the conversation than typing notes. Each feature below follows one rule: the meeting stays on your computer unless you send it somewhere yourself. Notes are generated by an AI model and may be wrong; the recording is kept so you can check.

01 / 10

Privacy Ledger

Every network request the app makes is written to a ledger you can open at any time: what was sent, how many bytes, to which host, and why. With the default local setup it lists only the model download and a daily update check, because audio is captured, transcribed and summarised on your machine.

If you choose a cloud provider for notes with your own key, the ledger records each transcript that goes out and to whom. Nothing else is ever sent, including audio, other meetings and your name.

  • Every outbound request logged with host, bytes and reason
  • Nothing about your meetings on it, on the default local setup
  • Cloud notes with your own key are listed transcript by transcript
  • No accounts, no telemetry and no crash reporting exist to log anything
  • Exportable as JSON alongside the rest of your data

Included in Free

02 / 10

Prep Briefs

When a calendar event with attendees starts within 45 minutes, Recordist matches them against your past meetings and writes a short brief: the last decisions, the open action items on both sides, and the questions nobody answered.

The brief is built locally from your own transcripts and notes. It needs no account and no network, and it's a Free feature, because a companion that only records is only doing half the job.

  • Matches attendees from calendar events to past meetings
  • Last decisions, your open items, their open items, open questions
  • Appears on the Meetings screen when a calendar event with attendees starts within 45 minutes
  • Works offline; built from local data only

Included in Free

03 / 10

MCP + A2A for your agents

One configuration block and your assistant can list, search and read your meetings, and answer with the timestamp. Ask Claude what was decided in Tuesday's call and it quotes the transcript.

For agent frameworks, Recordist also presents itself as an A2A agent. Both connections exist only on your own machine; no port is opened to your network. As far as we know, no other meeting tool gives your agents local access like this.

  • Works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and any MCP client
  • A2A agent card for agent frameworks
  • Read access on Free; full tools including start and stop recording on Pro
  • Local only, protected by a token that never leaves your machine

Included in Free

04 / 10

Background detection

Recordist sits in your menu bar or system tray and watches for the signals a meeting gives off: a meeting app opening, your microphone switching on, a calendar event starting, or a Meet tab loading in Chrome.

Detection is entirely local. Recordist reads the operating system's own audio-session state. It does not look at your screen and it never joins the call.

  • Mic-in-use detection that names the app holding the microphone
  • App detection for Zoom, Teams, Meet, Slack huddles, Webex and FaceTime
  • Optional calendar hints so the prompt already knows the meeting title
  • Chrome extension for browser meetings, paired with a one-time code
  • Every detector can be switched off individually

Included in Free

05 / 10

Confirm before recording

When a meeting is detected, a small card appears: which app is using the microphone, and three choices: Record, Not this one, Snooze 10m. Until you click Record, no audio is written anywhere.

If you ignore the prompt, it goes away on its own. There's no "auto-record" mode and no way for another app to start a recording without your say-so, unless you turn on remote start yourself.

  • Explicit Record button; no silent capture
  • Auto-dismiss after 45 seconds (configurable)
  • Snooze for 10 minutes when a call is personal
  • Pulsing Ember dot in the menu bar or system tray whenever recording is active
  • Global hotkey to start or stop: Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + R

Included in Free

06 / 10

On-device Whisper transcription

Recordist ships with whisper.cpp and downloads the model you pick to a folder you control. Transcription starts while the meeting is still running, so the transcript is ready seconds after you hang up.

Language is detected automatically across more than 90 languages, or pinned to one. Voice activity detection skips silence so short meetings finish fast.

  • Models from tiny (75 MB) to large-v3-turbo (default)
  • Metal on Apple silicon, CUDA and Vulkan on Windows and Linux, CPU everywhere
  • Live transcript during the meeting
  • Automatic language detection
  • Timestamps on every line; click to hear the moment

Included in Free

07 / 10

Dual-channel speaker separation

Most tools guess who spoke from a single mixed track. Recordist records your mic and the meeting's audio separately, so "You" is always right.

Today everyone on the other side of the call shares one speaker label. Splitting that into Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and remembering names is planned; the changelog will say when it ships.

  • Separate mic and system channels, 16 kHz mono each
  • "You" is never mis-attributed
  • Denoising on the microphone channel
  • Rename the remote speaker per meeting
  • Separate labels for each remote speaker: planned, not shipped yet

Included in Free

08 / 10

AI notes, Ask and follow-ups

Recordist's default note generator is built in: a private local engine that the app sets up for you on first use, with an open-weight model sized to your computer's memory. It needs no account or key and nothing extra to install, and nothing leaves your computer. If you'd rather use a frontier model, paste your own API key: Recordist calls the provider directly and never proxies through a Recordist server.

Ask lets you put a question to all your meetings at once ("what did Ana say about the deadline?") and get an answer with citations and timestamps. Templates control the shape of the notes: use the built-ins or write your own.

  • Built-in local engine by default (Qwen open-weight models, sized to your RAM)
  • Bring your own key: Anthropic, OpenAI, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
  • Action items with owner and due date, checkable
  • Ask across all meetings, with citations (Pro)
  • Follow-up email draft and custom templates (Pro); 14 days of every Pro feature on Free, then 3 AI notes per month

Core in Free · advanced in Pro

10 / 10

Exports

Your meetings are yours. Export a single meeting or your whole library in open formats that any other tool can read. Point auto-export at an Obsidian vault or a synced folder and every meeting lands there as Markdown.

The formats are deliberately plain: Markdown and TXT for notes apps and plain text, SRT and VTT for subtitles with timestamps, and JSON for your own scripts.

  • Markdown, TXT, SRT, VTT and JSON (Pro; Markdown on Free)
  • Auto-export folder for Obsidian, Logseq or any notes app
  • Bulk export and full data deletion any time

Core in Free · advanced in Pro

See it against the alternatives.

Seven tools and eleven rows, with no marketing adjectives. Competitor details come from their published documentation, last checked September 2026.

Open the comparison Download Recordist