Ways to write minutes, and your privacy

MeetCap uses an AI that you choose to write summaries during a meeting, and to correct the transcript and write the minutes afterward. It can be an AI service, your agent, or a local model that MeetCap downloads to this computer. You choose it during first-time setup, and you can change it anytime in Settings › Minutes.

Recording and speech recognition stay on this computer whichever way you choose. Only text goes to the AI.

What the AI receives

For each task, MeetCap gives the AI:

• The transcript text, or the part of it that the task needs.
• The meeting’s background: its title, who attends, the agenda, the terms it uses, and where the last meeting in the series left off.
• Your glossary.

The AI never receives your recordings or the voices MeetCap remembers.

Whichever way you choose, the AI gets the same text. MeetCap tells the AI to treat the transcript and the background only as meeting material, and not to follow any instructions in them. MeetCap checks each result before saving it. Corrections can change the words of a line, but not its time or speaker.

The ways to choose from

Your own API key

MeetCap sends the text straight from this computer to the endpoint you enter: an OpenAI-compatible service or the Claude API. Before saving, MeetCap shows where the text will go and asks you to agree. The service’s own terms and privacy policy apply to the text it receives.

Your API key is stored only on this computer, in your keychain. It isn’t in the meeting library and doesn’t sync.

Your agent, run by MeetCap

MeetCap starts an agent on this computer in the background, such as Claude Code, Codex, or Qoder, and gives it the task. The agent sends the text to the AI service it uses, under that service’s terms.

The agent can look up unfamiliar names and terms, in files on this computer or online, to get them right. To let it read files in folders such as Documents, click Allow under Folder access. macOS asks once for each folder.

Your agent, when you ask it

You ask your agent for the minutes in its own chat window, and it writes them. MeetCap never starts the agent. Your agent reads the meeting from your library, and its provider’s terms apply to what it reads.

During the meeting, an agent that can run on a schedule writes a summary at the interval you set. MeetCap tells you when the transcript is ready.

This computer

A local model on this computer writes the summaries and minutes, translates the minutes, and suggests names for speakers. The transcript text stays on this computer and isn’t sent to any AI service. You don’t need an agent subscription or an API key, and there’s no per-meeting cost.

MeetCap downloads the local model only when you choose This computer, either during first-time setup or in Settings › Minutes. The download is about 5.1 GB, and the model uses about 5.2 GB of disk space once installed.

Writing the minutes takes a while after the meeting ends, and longer meetings mean a longer wait: after a long meeting, it can take 15 minutes or more. The minutes are also less accurate than minutes written by an agent or with your own API key, so check figures, names and decisions before you rely on them. If accuracy matters most, use an agent or your own API key instead.

On a Mac with an Intel processor, the local model is much slower than on a Mac with Apple silicon. In one test, writing the minutes for a short meeting took about 20 minutes. Writing a summary can take several minutes, and writing the minutes for a one-hour meeting can take hours. For faster results on these Macs, use an agent or your own API key. To check which kind of Mac you have, see Install MeetCap.

To choose a different option, see Choose what writes the minutes. To delete the local model, see This computer.

MeetCap account

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When the AI is used

• During the meeting: a summary every 5 minutes. You can change the interval in Settings › Minutes.
• After the meeting: the minutes. Correcting names and terms in the transcript is part of the same task.
• When you ask: minutes in the other language. If you turn on Write minutes in both Chinese and English, MeetCap writes them after every meeting. This uses the AI one more time for each meeting.
• For speakers with no name: a suggestion of who they may be, from what was said. See Speakers and voices.

If the minutes can’t be written, the transcript is still complete. The meeting shows why, with Try again or Open Minutes Settings. Running meetcap doctor also tries again.

Changes in Settings › Minutes apply to future meetings. For the full details of what is sent and where, see the privacy notice, section 6. For the steps, see Write minutes and change their language.