Writing

Notes from inside the meeting-AI category

We research this category to build against it, and publish what the research turns up. Every claim here is dated and sourced to the vendor where possible. Where we could not verify something, we say so and leave it out rather than repeating it.

The free AI notetaker is genuinely free. Here is why I self-host anyway. 28 July 2026 · Conceding Fathom's free tier, the death of "no bot," and real-time novelty up front -- then arguing from what survives: where audio is processed, who trains on it, and tactical vs descriptive live output. Three degrees of local: what "self-hosted" actually means in a meeting assistant 28 July 2026 · The local/cloud boundary is a spectrum with three positions, chosen per component. What leaves your machine at each one, cited to file paths instead of adjectives. Live meeting AI arrived in one week. All of it is Enterprise-gated. 25 July 2026 · Otter and Zoom both shipped real-time in-call coaching within 48 hours. The interesting question is now the mechanism, not the feature.

Comparisons

Longer-form, maintained side-by-sides against the tools people actually evaluate us against.

Open-source meeting assistants The self-hosted landscape, compared honestly -- including when to pick something else Gong and Backchannel Not a replacement claim: where a live seller-side layer fits under revenue intelligence Plaud alternative Bot-free capture without the hardware or the cloud

Meeting AI that runs on your hardware

Self-hosted, open source, MIT licensed. No bot in the room, no audio in anyone's cloud.

Download for desktop Self-host in minutes View on GitHub