What is the best AI notetaking tool that doesn’t actually “join” the call?
I’ve been curious to try an AI notetaking tool that doesn’t loudly announce itself when joining a call and only shares the notes afterwards with me.
I guess this is starting to become more commonplace but it still feels (to me) like an intruder in the call, and like I should ask permission (just as when someone records the call - I’m honestly not sure there is really any difference).
Ideally one that works crossplatforms with any video conferencing tool since I use Zoom, Google Hangouts, Tandem and Facetime!
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Product Hunt
To my knowledge, @Granola and @Krisp are the two that don't join the meeting and record and transcribe directly from your computer's audio.
Product Hunt
@steveb @ph_leeanntrang that give me the heebie jeebies! It feels far less intrusive to have the notetaker on the call than to have it record my computer's entire audio.
Product Hunt
@ph_leeanntrang @andrew_g_stewart Agree! There are legal concerns with this way of recording meetings, too. In some US states and under federal law, only one party has to be aware of the recording but there are two-party states like California, Illinois, and Florida that require both parties to be aware. Other countries have their own laws for this, too, as you can imagine.
AVE
Adjacent option: @NotchLive doesn’t join the call at all. It runs on the Mac and captions/translates local audio, so it works across Zoom/Meet/Teams without adding a bot. More ‘private live captions + notes’ than a classic meeting assistant.
Product Hunt
@Superpowered had a really slick implementation, though I don't think it's being actively developed. Been hearing great things about Granola!
JotMe
JotMe focuses on transcription and meeting recording without joining the meetings. It's a desktop app that transcribes the audio on your computer so it will work for Zoom, Google Hangouts, Tandem and Facetime. Let me know what you think of it, if you have a chance to try it for free!
MeetGeek
@MeetGeek offers both solutions — you can invite the notetaker to your meeting or use the browser extension recorder to capture and transcribe any web-based meeting (Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, Discord, and more) without an extra “participant.” It’s a polished, cross-platform way to get reliable transcripts and AI notes every time
You should give @OktoNote a try. It's not limited to just meetings note taking, but becomes your everyday note taking app. But of course, if you just turn on audio and start recording, it can understand context create discussion notes and action items that you need follow on. It can even understand context between mutiple meetings and if on same topic can auto merge and mark your action items as complete.
@TrainScription Just launched. Stays local to your machine. Train it on your jargon for better output over time. Take the transcript to whatever AI summarizer platform that you trust. Not just confined to the browser.
Record the call yourself and run it through Whisper or drop the audio into Claude. Takes 2 minutes and nothing joins your meeting. If you want something more polished, Notta and tl;dv both have upload-from-file options so no bot needed.
A bit biased since I’m one of the co-founders, but this is actually one of the main reasons we built OLVA.ai.
No bot joins the call, and it works independently of the meeting platform, so you can use it across Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, etc., as well as in-person conversations.
We also wanted to go beyond note-taking. OLVA transcribes live, automatically detects questions as they’re asked, provides real-time answers and insights, and then gives you summaries, action items, and searchable meeting memory afterward.
If the visible “AI bot joined” experience is what bothers you, I’d love for you to give OLVA a try and tell us what you think.