Field notes
Writing on local-first
meeting transcripts.
Best AI meeting notetaker for Mac in 2026 (private, on-device, lifetime)
Compared 7 AI meeting notetakers for Mac in 2026 on privacy, system-audio capture, speaker labels, AI summaries, pricing, and offline use. The shortlist for people who don't want a bot in the call.
2026-05-03·11 min readmac meeting recorderai notetakerHow to Transcribe Zoom Without a Bot (Mac, 2026)
No bot in the call, no cloud upload. Capture mic + system audio via ScreenCaptureKit for speaker-labeled transcripts and AI summaries, all on-device.
2026-05-03·9 min readzoomtranscriptionOllama vs OpenAI for meeting summaries on Mac (2026)
When to use a local Ollama model vs OpenAI for summarizing meeting transcripts on macOS. Latency, cost, privacy, and quality compared with real numbers.
2026-05-03·8 min readollamaopenaiNDA-Safe Meeting Recording: Fully On-Device (Mac)
Nothing leaves your machine. Record meetings under NDA, HIPAA, and GDPR with no cloud notetaker: ScreenCaptureKit + on-device ASR + local LLM on macOS.
2026-05-03·10 min readprivacyndaBest local meeting recorder for Mac in 2026 (no cloud, no bot)
A buyer's guide for a Mac meeting recorder that keeps audio on your machine. What to look for, what to skip, and which apps actually meet the bar in 2026.
2026-05-03·7 min readmac meeting recorderlocal-firstRecord a Zoom call on Mac without a bot (2026 practical guide)
A no-bot, no-cloud workflow for recording Zoom calls on macOS in 2026. ScreenCaptureKit setup, the permissions you actually need, and how to keep audio inside your trust boundary.
2026-05-29·10 min readzoomno-botMac meeting assistant 2026 - the seven shortlisted, ranked
Looking for a Mac meeting assistant in 2026? We compared seven against the same criteria - audio location, system-audio capture, speaker labels, AI provider, pricing. Here is what we found.
2026-05-29·11 min readmac meeting assistantcomparisonSpeaker Diarization on Mac (2026): Free, Local, No Cloud
Label who said what, fully on-device - no upload. How pyannote + CAM++ run on the Neural Engine for named speakers across meetings, free on macOS.
2026-05-29·12 min readdiarizationpyannoteLocal vs cloud AI meeting notes - the 2026 privacy framework
A practical privacy framework for picking between local and cloud AI meeting notes. NDA, HIPAA, GDPR, attorney-client privilege - where the line actually sits in 2026.
2026-05-29·11 min readprivacycomplianceHow AI action-item extraction from meeting transcripts actually works
An honest walkthrough of how AI extracts action items from a meeting transcript - the prompt structure, the failure modes, why timestamps anchor the output, and what the LLM cannot do.
2026-05-29·9 min readaction itemsllm